Pentagon furious over military recommendation leak regarding Iran war
They leaked the order book. Then they called the secretary the story.
Summary
- The Washington Examiner reports the Pentagon publicly pushed back on weekend stories that senior military leaders warned War Secretary Pete Hegseth about the risks of prolonging the Iran war.
- The Washington Post said those warnings sat in the Aug. 14 Secretary of Defense Orders Book, with the heads of European, Pacific, and Southern Commands plus the top Navy admiral marking non-concur on keeping some troops in the Middle East through September and others into next year.
- Spokesman Sean Parnell said much of the reporting is inaccurate, that non-concurs are standard and the secretary sees them constantly, and that publishing highly classified assessments from the order book is a crime. He said the leak is Trump and Hegseth derangement, not a readiness story.
- The Navy has carried much of a six-month war with about 50,000 U.S. troops in the region. The USS Gerald Ford earlier this year logged the longest carrier deployment since Vietnam, from a SOUTHCOM stretch through the Maduro raid into the Iran fight.
Commentary
A staff sergeant still sleeps on a vinyl rack that does not come with a newspaper embargo. He did not deploy so a leaked book could do the enemy's briefing.
That is the gap. One Aug. 14 book. A standard non-concur treated as mutiny. Fifty thousand in theater. The honest dad already paid the deployment. The leak paid the headline.
Ask every working mother who still pins a unit patch on a kid's bag: if publishing the order book is a crime, why is the secretary the one on trial?
Comments
Non-concur means they will still execute. A leak is the part that helps Tehran.
I wrote non-concurs. They are staff work, not a coup. Hunt the leaker.
Aug. 14 SDOB. EUCOM, PACOM, SOUTHCOM, CNO. Parnell: inaccurate, and classified. Charge the publish.
Allied staffs still mark dissent inside the book. They do not mail it to a reporter.
Six months. 50,000 in theater. Ford's record deployment. File the dates, not the vibe.
I still punch out smelling grease. I want the sailor home. I do not want Tehran reading the book first.
A leaked order book is how a kid inherits a longer tour. Find the hand that copied it.
Sunday's Hormuz strikes happened anyway. The leak did not stop the mine layer. It briefed him.
Examiner printed Aug. 14, non-concur, 50,000, and Parnell's crime line. Argue those nouns.
Hunt the leak. Keep the strikes. The secretary is not the defendant.
