Let's talk about Trump downplaying US losses to Iran.... - Belle of the Ranch

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about Trump downplaying US losses to Iran.

We've talked for quite some time about how the responses from Iran to Trump's move appear to be more significant than the administration has been letting on and that the rumor mill and bits of open- source footage that have come out have led us to believe that some of Trump's statements about how things were going were embellishments or in some cases downright fantasy.

We also talked about how the administration depiction of the effectiveness of US air defenses and how prepared the military was for the inevitable response was false. That became especially apparent when the survivors of one of the attacks went to the press. Well, now the reporting has come out and matched up with what we've been seeing. The reporting says that since the end of February, more than 100 sites across 11 US bases in the region have been targeted. Those strikes are estimated to have caused more than $5 billion worth of damage.

Iranian targeting is more effective than Trump's team has claimed, and they've hit radar stations, hangers, runways, and of course the E3 Sentry aircraft.

Even with our skeptical view of the administration's claims, there was one thing that even surprised us. According to reporting, an Iranian F5 fighter penetrated US air defenses and struck a base in Kuwait. A fixed-wing aircraft hitting a US base is not a common thing. It's also worth mentioning that the F5 is a US-designed plane. The last deliveries to Iran occurred before the 1979 revolution. That means that there's a pretty high likelihood that the aircraft that made it through US defenses was about 50 years old.

It's worth noting that Iran has some more modern domestically produced aircraft that bear a strong resemblance to the F5. So, we should leave the door open to the possibility that the plane was misidentified.

Another separate issue is an anomaly with the casualty count. When the ceasefire went into effect, the total count of US casualties was 385. Then, even though the fighting had reportedly stopped, the number continued to climb until it reached 428. That could easily be explained by the processing of injuries sustained prior to the halt of the fighting, but then the number fell to 413.

Look, it's the military. Nobody who has ever served believes military records are always correct or thinks that revisions don't happen. But the constant cheerleading rather than providing actual briefings is creating an information vacuum.

DoD expects the media to accept press releases as fact. when soldiers are going to the press saying the information is inaccurate and the depiction of the early response from Iran seems to be incredibly inaccurate.

It's hard to believe their pronouncements that the war will be over soon and their projections about the future when their statements about bases and damage are shown to be false. The longer this goes on, the more of a problem this will become.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.