Former Protection Secretary Mark Esper mentioned Tuesday that former President Trump’s current remarks suggesting U.S. troop accidents in Iraq are “clearly not correct.”
“Yeah, that’s, that’s obviously not accurate,” he responded when requested by CNN’s Kaitlyn Collins if the previous protection official noticed these mind accidents as simply “headaches.”
Esper, who served underneath the Trump administration, pointed to quite a lot of troopers who self-reported “very serious” damages.
“You know, we talked about this afterward,” he continued. “I wrote about this in my memoir. We went through that entire night trying to get an assessment of what the damage was done to our … the harm done to our troops.”
His feedback got here shortly after Trump, throughout a marketing campaign cease in Milwaukee, dismissed accidents sustained by U.S. troops throughout a 2020 Iranian missile strike on an Iraqi base that left dozens with traumatic mind accidents. He was responding to a reporter who requested if his administration ought to have responded extra strongly.
Trump, who withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and through his first time period in workplace, argued throughout the rally that there was “nobody ever tougher on Iran” than he was.
“So first of all, injured. What does injured mean? Injured means — you mean because they had a headache? Because the bombs never hit the fort,” the previous president replied.
“And if you were a truthful reporter, which you’re not, you would tell the following: None of those very accurate missiles hit our fort,” he added. “They all hit outside, and there was nobody hurt other than the sound was loud, and some people said that hurt, and I accept that.”
Over 100 U.S. troops suffered traumatic mind accidents following the strike, protection officers mentioned on the time. The incident was initiated as payback for Trump’s order to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Esper mentioned on CNN that “troops defended extraordinarily well, but when we got up the next morning, we had no injuries, traditionally, as you would know, but over time, we came to learn, as troops did self-reporting, and really came to reported some of their symptoms that we had, I think dozens, over 100 cases reported, and several were very serious, traumatic brain injuries.”
The previous Protection chief, who mentioned in late March that he wouldn’t be voting for Trump within the 2024 election, recalled visiting injured servicemembers once they have been recovering at Walter Reed Nationwide Medical Middle in Maryland.
“And it took some time to discover these again, but eventually over 100 troops reported injuries as some of them were very serious,” Esper, who joined CNN as a contributor in February, mentioned.
“I bear in mind visiting a soldier at Walter Reed Hospital, a pair months later and speaking concerning the assault and what he skilled, and so it is fairly a traumatic evening,” he added.
