President Trump continues to say that Iran wants to make a deal to end the war and that the U.S. has control over the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the president downplayed concerns about the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln. MS NOW Senior National Security Reporter David Rohde and New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker join Stephanie Ruhle with more details and analysis.
Yeah, I think IEDs were the big issue that was scaring the American soldiers. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the US planners were caught off guard. It might just mean that they thought that an occasional light vehicle taken out by an IED was an acceptable loss.
The number of acceptable losses according to military planners is always going to be much higher than the number of acceptable losses according to the people getting killed. Often the power rests with the planners and the soldiers just have to grumble and accept it. It’s interesting that in this case the soldiers were able to make their case so effectively that the military started putting armour on light vehicles, something that’s very rarely done.
Lots of people driving “behind the lines” supply routes with vehicles that were never meant to operate under fire or be nimble also got hit.
The US went in thinking that it would be like the Normandy campaign with overall friendly locals.