On the first day of Trump’s war with Iran, a U.S. missile struck an Iranian elementary school, killing more than 100 children. Trump initially tried to blame Iran, then said he was “willing to live” with whatever the investigation found. By July, he was suggesting that images of the attack might be “AI generated” and that there couldn’t be “a conclusive report.” Now there apparently is one, and his Pentagon intends to keep it under wraps until the voting is over.
IBTimes UK summarizes the reporting:
Top Pentagon officials intend to delay releasing an internal report into the attack on a school in southern Iran until after the US midterm elections at the earliest, according to sources familiar with the matter, The Straits Times reported. The sources told the newspaper that advisers to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had communicated the plan to some Pentagon personnel. ... According to The Straits Times, the full US probe, launched in March, remains unpublished, although officials said it had been all but complete for several months. …
Mark Esper, who served as defence secretary during President Donald Trump’s first administration, also stressed the importance of disclosure. ‘Transparency is important—obviously for those affected but for us as well—for the nature of our government, which is supposed to be open and transparent,’ Esper said. ‘We should acknowledge our mistakes and fix it to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
Pentagon investigators found that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI contributed to the strike. Officially, the investigation is still “ongoing,” eight months after the attack and months after officials say it was essentially finished. With the war already unpopular, the administration that former press secretary Karoline Leavitt once billed as “the most accessible and transparent administration in history” has apparently decided voters can learn how more than 100 children were killed after they’ve cast their ballots.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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