Monday on CNN’s “OutFront,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) claimed that the Trump administration had not been transparent regarding soldiers who have been wounded or killed.
Partial transcript as follows:
ERIN BURNETT: Do you know the full extent of American injuries and do you know the full extent of equipment losses?
SMITH: We don’t. We don’t. Look, we don’t because the Pentagon has not been transparent about that. I get reports from people who, they know a service member at a base in Jordan or Iraq, or someone saying, ‘Yeah, we heard there was an attack. There’s 20 or 30 people wounded.’ The Pentagon doesn’t say anything about it. We dig into it as The New York Times has, and you then find out. But look, this is, again, no transparency, as you said, no press, no conversation about this.
We have a dictator running this country. We have never had a situation where we’ve been at war and the president has treated it as his own war, where he doesn’t have to share information with the American people or with Congress. I mean, this is a frightening situation. And, yeah, they have not been telling us what’s been happening in terms of lost equipment, in terms of the cost of the war, and certainly in terms of the service members who have been wounded.
BURNETT: Can I just say something that I think is, I guess, is painfully obvious, but I feel like I have to say it, Congressman. You are the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. It would seem to me definitional that if anybody knew the extent of losses of things like the entire missile defense system for the United States bases and countries that we support in the region, and American troops being injured, that your source wouldn’t be somebody calling who has a friend who serves on a base. But you’re telling me it is.
SMITH: Yeah. And we’re digging. My staff is constantly in contact with as many people as we can at the Pentagon. You know, they are just not being transparent. We have to sort of pull it out of them or find it in one place or another. So look, I mean, the lack of transparency certainly is concerning.
The Iran war has been widely unpopular since Trump launched it in February. Polls have consistently shown a clear majority of Americans oppose it.
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