"USS Benfold lost power after ‘engineering casualty’ leaving sailors without galley services, toilets and air conditioning

A US guided-missile destroyer reportedly spent four days adrift and without power in the South China Sea in July, furthering concerns about strain being placed on deployed military members.

The USS Benfold, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer which had been sailing with the George Washington carrier strike group, was reported to have been towed to Subic Bay in the Philippines, according to the US Naval Institute News, an independent military publication.

The 10,000-ton destroyer lost power after what a spokesperson with the US seventh fleet called “an engineering casualty involving its generators”, resulting in a loss of power.

That loss of power meant sailors were without galley services, toilets and air conditioning, Commander Matthew Comer told USNI News in a statement. Another vessel, USS Robert Smalls, the cruiser attached to the strike group, had to help provide meals for the crew.

Comer said that the Benfield lost power on 24 July and was towed on 28 July.

...

The USS George Washington strike group on Monday was headed to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, a carrier that in recent days was subject to reports by the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes of multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard after more than 200 days without a port call.

Trump told reporters on Monday the carrier had been at sea for a “good period of time” and said he had spoken with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for “much longer”. Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of”.

Reports of poor morale prompted Democratic lawmakers and military families to demand that the Trump administration answer questions about low morale, mental health challenges and living conditions for crew members.

Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and retired marine, said on ABC News on Sunday that the problems arose from the Iran war that the Trump administration started in February but has not been able to resolve. The Lincoln originally deployed to the Indo-Pacific before being ordered to sail to the Middle East in January.

“The deep, deep, deep problem here is that this administration did not plan for this war, did not plan how to get out of this war, and did not really understand how this war was going to escalate,” he said."

"Navy Carrier’s Problems Are Tied to Attacks on U.S. Base Early in War

Diego Garcia, a tiny island 2,200 miles from the Gulf of Oman, took over as the Navy’s logistics hub after Iran damaged a base in Bahrain."

The same famine conditions that America forced on the rest of the world for decades, using US sanctions, they are now getting a taste of their own medicine on the USS Lincoln carrier.

Smart move, Iran.

https://kvia.com/politics/cnn-us-politics/2026/08/02/exclusive-us-military-asks-troops-for-creative-and-unconventional-ideas-to-punish-iran/

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable —options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.

“At the end of the day, POTUS will want a deal, so he’ll continually look for ways to get tough and get out of this,” said one of the sources familiar with recent planning discussions.

“You need creative minds at times — especially if you’re running out of conventional options.”

Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency have recently assessed that the kind of bombing the US is carrying out is unlikely to shift the Iranian negotiating position, CNN has reported.

The president’s most senior military adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, has acknowledged publicly that bombing alone is unlikely to accomplish all Trump’s previously stated objectives for the war.

“Air power has its limits,” Caine told lawmakers last month.

Trump could escalate by putting American boots on the ground, a threat he’s made repeatedly as he’s talked about occupying the strategic Kharg Island or removing Iran’s highly enriched uranium. But that would further break a key promise he made to his MAGA base: “I will not send you to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never ends,” he said during a 2024 campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

https://kvia.com/politics/cnn-us-politics/2026/08/02/exclusive-us-military-asks-troops-for-creative-and-unconventional-ideas-to-punish-iran/

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable —options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.

“At the end of the day, POTUS will want a deal, so he’ll continually look for ways to get tough and get out of this,” said one of the sources familiar with recent planning discussions.

“You need creative minds at times — especially if you’re running out of conventional options.”

Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency have recently assessed that the kind of bombing the US is carrying out is unlikely to shift the Iranian negotiating position, CNN has reported.

The president’s most senior military adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, has acknowledged publicly that bombing alone is unlikely to accomplish all Trump’s previously stated objectives for the war.

“Air power has its limits,” Caine told lawmakers last month.

Trump could escalate by putting American boots on the ground, a threat he’s made repeatedly as he’s talked about occupying the strategic Kharg Island or removing Iran’s highly enriched uranium. But that would further break a key promise he made to his MAGA base: “I will not send you to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never ends,” he said during a 2024 campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

One less imperialist asset to bomb innocent schoolgirls.

Keep in mind that Q2 was before Saudi Arabia chose to bomb an airport in Yemen, and chose to provoke the Houthis into the fight. So you can imagine how much worse it's already getting now for the Saudis.

Invade and blockade Yemen for years, suffer the consequences.

Hide behind US military bases, while letting the US bomb your neighbors, suffer the consequences.

Pentagon list of service members killed in Iran war removes most recent four

New York Times reports that list of those killed changed from 18 on Wednesday to 14 on Thursday

The Pentagon’s official online list of service members killed in the ongoing Iran war does not include the four soldiers who died during renewed fighting over the weekend, despite the fact that their names were included in a Pentagon press release on the formal transfer of their remains back to the United States on Wednesday.

A review of the current list on the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System website shows that, despite having been last updated on Wednesday, the number of US military personnel killed during Operation Epic Fury, the Pentagon’s name for the US-Israeli war on Iran that Donald Trump launched on 28 February, remains at 14.

A separate Names of Fallen list on the same Pentagon casualties site currently includes just 13 service members.

According to a New York Times report, the Pentagon website listed 18 American service members as having been killed during the war on Iran on Wednesday, but was changed on Thursday to exclude three service members killed last Friday, Saturday and Sunday as Iran retaliated for new US strikes with an attack on a base used by US forces in Jordan. The list also excluded a fourth soldier who was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone at Erbil airbase in Iraq.

By Thursday, the defense department had lowered that number, reporting that 14 American troops had been killed in the war.

Three military officials told the Times that “one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list … because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April”.

A Pentagon spokesperson disputed that contention, telling the Times that the decreased total of service members killed was due to “temporary data disruptions” that would be quickly fixed.

The Pentagon did not immediately return the Guardian’s request for comment.

The reported removal of the recent service members killed from the Pentagon list comes one day after Trump traveled to Dover air force base in Delaware to salute the remains of the four soldiers killed in the past week and as he continues to demand credit for the number of people killed being so much lower than in years-long conflicts like the US wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, Trump posted a chart on his social media platform comparing the death toll of 18 in his Iran war with those previous wars, which misstated the number of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the caption: “These are the real facts. REPORT THEM!”

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, on his way to what the Pentagon calls the “dignified transfer” of the service members’ remains, Trump claimed that the dead soldiers had supported his claim that the war on Iran is necessary to prevent that country from developing a nuclear weapons – an effort US intelligence assessed Iran abandoned in 2003.

“We’re going to Dover,” Trump said, “to honor our heroes, and they’re indeed great heroes. All of them said, very strongly, that we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

At an event on Thursday, Trump again argued that the death toll from his war on Iran was low compared with that of Vietnam, the war he did not serve in as a young man.

Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman of Kentucky, suggested that the reason the Pentagon death toll for the Iran war excludes the four soldiers killed in the past week is that the Trump administration claims that the war technically ended in June, when Trump signed a temporary ceasefire with Iran over dinner at the palace of Versailles.

“Let me explain this absurd ruse: The Pentagon is pretending there have been two Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire,” Massie wrote on social media. “The reality: By going more than 90 days without congressional authorization,” the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, “IS BREAKING THE LAW and must be held accountable”.

Invade and blockade Yemen for years, suffer the consequences.

Hide behind US military bases, while letting the US bomb your neighbors, suffer the consequences.

"4 US soldiers killed in Iran war return to American soil

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE — Four U.S. service members returned to American soil in flag-draped caskets on Wednesday after being killed in Iranian attacks in the Middle East.

The ceremony, known as a “dignified transfer” of the bodies, comes amid growing frustration with the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

The war has cost U.S. taxpayers at least $37.5 billion, has led to the deaths of 18 U.S. service members and injured more than 450 troops. It has killed thousands of Iranians.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have raised questions about the war, which has boosted global oil prices and shows no signs of ending. Since the war started in February, President Donald Trump has offered differing objectives for the war.

Four in five Americans expect ‌the war to drag on for an extended period, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll conducted this month. Some 37% of respondents approved of U.S. military strikes against Iran."

CORRECTION: It was 2 Saudi oil-carrying tankers. Can't change post titles, unfortunately.

For those who don't know, this is the Gulf states' invasion of Yemen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_Yemeni_civil_war

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Sudan, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, and Jordan, all backed by the US, all invading...Yemen.

"12,907 Yemeni civilians killed (per the LCRD) 8,672 civilians killed, 9,741 injured by coalition's airstrikes (per Yemen Data Project)[80]"

You won't see this plastered all over mainstream media.

"As 69% of US adults hold an unfavorable opinion of the Israeli government, Israel has spent an all-time high on hasbara at roughly $730 million, over four times the sum allowed in 2025.

Israel paid at least $50 million to US-based firms to help its standing with Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

The report alleged that the Israeli government had retained at least six firms to help in its efforts to sway public opinion in the United States in its favor. It added that at least three dozen new people, many of them in the marketing industry, have registered as foreign agents for Israel

This comes as 42% of American adults hold an unfavorable opinion of Israeli people, and 69% hold an unfavorable opinion of the Israeli government, a July poll from the Pew Research Center found.

The WSJ reported that Israel’s 2026 budget to improve its image and global standing was set for over $700 million. In 2025, Israel’s Foreign Ministry received $150 million, on top of what it gets for its existing activities, for public diplomacy, or in Hebrew, hasbara.

Israel spends record numbers on Hasbara in 2026

That sum was more than 20 times what hasbara efforts have typically been allotted in past years.

But in 2026, the government allocated roughly $730 million, more than four times the sum allotted in 2025.

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft researcher Nick Cleveland-Stout told the WSJ that Israel is on track to spend more than any other country on influencing US public opinion, based on funds disclosed to the US federal government this year.

In the past, nations such as Qatar spent around $400 billion to influence US public opinion, according to a June memo from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Notably, the WSJ report is also the latest accusation that former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been hired to act on behalf of Israel.

According to the report, Parscale, who is now the chief strategy officer at Salem Media, was paid over $45 million to launch a series of campaigns by Israel to help boost its standing in the US.

Time reported that Parscale promised the campaign would produce "at least 50 million digital impressions per month, as well as influence how AI tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini characterized Israel and the war.”

The WSJ also reported that part of Parscale’s contracts were launching artificial-intelligence-generated texts to thousands of US citizens under the guise of “sharing perspectives and educating people about the importance of the US-Israel relationship.”

The goal of the AI in the campaign was to deduce the biggest concerns US citizens have about Israel, combat them, and report the answers back to the government, Parscale said, according to the WSJ.

One Foreign Ministry source told Time that another aim of the campaign was to prevent any “young conservatives from turning against Israel,” which the ministry believed Parscale was uniquely capable of doing.

But beyond Parscale, the Israeli government is using several other firms to improve Americans’ opinions of it.

One group, Show Faith by Works, reportedly filed documents outlining plans to send pro-Israel messaging to around 4 million megachurch members and Christian college students in the American Southwest through a geofencing campaign, the WSJ reported.

Show Faith by Works said that it would show “positive associations with the Nation of Israel while linking the Palestinian population with extremist factions.”

[Original paywalled article:]

https://www.wsj.com/politics/israels-50-million-experiment-to-change-u-s-public-opinion-253b3b70

"The Iranian attack that killed two U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing on Friday was the fourth in five days on U.S. forces in Jordan, multiple American officials said. Taken together, the attacks have wounded dozens of U.S. service members and damaged a number of helicopters.

The flurry of attacks and the losses they have caused are a sign that Iranian forces not only still have ample missile stocks but have also become more adept at evading U.S. air defense systems, said the U.S. officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

Jordan, which hosts major U.S. air bases, grew in importance in the run-up to and the early days of the war, as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to relatively more secure locations in Jordan and Israel. The country’s role in U.S. operations has only increased as other American allies in the region have restricted Washington’s ability to base troops in and fly aircraft over their territories, the U.S. officials said."

"July 18, 2026 - The Department of State advises Americans worldwide to exercise increased caution.

Location: Worldwide

Event: Due to heightened tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remains complex with the potential for unforeseen escalation. 

We remind Americans in the region of the continued need for caution and encourage them to monitor the news for breaking developments.  The Department of State advises Americans worldwide, and especially in the Middle East, to exercise increased caution. Americans abroad should follow the guidance in security alerts issued by the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate. Flight cancellations and periodic airspace closures may cause travel disruptions. U.S. diplomatic facilities, including outside the Middle East, have been targeted. Groups supportive of Iran may target other U.S. interests overseas or locations associated with the United States and/or Americans throughout the world."

"Iranian attacks on at least two military bases in Jordan this week reportedly injured several U.S. service members when their facility was struck, CBS News reported Friday.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

The Iranian military this week stepped up drone and missile attacks on U.S.-allied nations in the Persian Gulf after Washington for several straight days launched waves of strikes on Iranian targets."

"The airman, Cmdr. Gabriel Edwards, was the commanding officer of Helicopter Sea Combat (HSC) Squadron 5.

He went missing on July 1 after an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter made an emergency landing in the Arabian Sea.

After more than 100 hours of search-and-rescue efforts covering more than 14,000 square miles, the Navy suspended the search on July 5. Three other crew members were recovered after the landing in the Arabian Sea. The incident is under investigation.

More than 400 service members have been wounded since the beginning of the Iran war.

Six soldiers were killed in an Iranian drone strike on a command center in Kuwait. One service member then died after being injured in a strike while stationed in Saudi Arabia. Six other service members were killed in a KC-135 refueling aircraft crash in Iraq.

"Shipping companies are avoiding using a U.S. military-guided transit scheme through the Strait ​of Hormuz after a wave of Iranian attacks on vessels sparked safety concerns, seven maritime security and shipping industry sources said.

Since the Iran war began on February 28, Iranian forces have mined this area, forcing vessels to use one of two makeshift routes close to either the Iranian or Omani coast.

Yet shippers are evaluating the route on the Omani side of the strait as increasingly dangerous after a ⁠wave of attacks on ships.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday claimed responsibility for attacks on two Emirati oil supertankers.

Some five ships have been attacked since July 7 – three crude supertankers, one LNG tanker and one container ship – in ​Omani waters that fell under the U.S. scheme, according to analysis of incidents based on data from the U.N.'s shipping agency.

It was unclear if all the ships were sailing under the U.S. scheme, the sources said.

"The U.S. doesn't ​seem to have any control over the situation," one shipping source said, adding that their company had opted not to sail through the strait due to crew safety concerns and the deteriorating security situation.

"Iran’s continued ability to target ships sailing through the Omani route means the Trump administration’s proposed solution to keep ships moving is unlikely to work," said Torbjorn Solvedt, principal Middle East analyst with risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.

Iran threatened on Wednesday to shut off more regional energy exports, after the U.S. re-imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports and both sides launched more strikes as they vie for control of the strait.

Tehran is signaling it may use its Houthi allies in Yemen to shut the Bab el-Mandeb, which leads into the Red Sea, opening a new front against Washington and putting two of the world's most vital shipping arteries at risk.

Around nine Greek-operated LNG tankers, which had sailed into the Gulf via Hormuz in the past week to load cargoes, were stuck inside ​the strait due to the security concerns, another shipping ​source said.

Two further tankers have been attacked since ⁠July 7 in open waters outside the strait."

"Trump said the U.S. partnership with Iraq would shift away from military cooperation toward investment and energy development, while al-Zaidi said: "The 30th of September, the U.S. forces would be out of Iraq. While U.S. companies will be inside Iraq."