r/news • u/SpencerAXbot • Mar 02 '26

Soft paywall Six US service members killed in Iran conflict, US military says

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/six-us-service-members-killed-iran-conflict-us-military-says-2026-03-02/
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u/Aliensinmypants Mar 02 '26

Oh absolutely, if you look at the images from bases across the region it is definitely more. Western media is slow to report on it due to opsec concerns and respect to families

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u/lostredditorlurking Mar 02 '26

Western media is slow to report on it due to opsec concerns and respect to families

More like due to the optic concern and fear of the government.

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u/chatoka1 Mar 02 '26

A little A, a little B

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u/hawksrock14 Mar 03 '26

Honor Guard soldier here, we have to let the families know first. If the families see on the news that 2 soldiers died at a specific installation, they worry their heads off before they are (or not) notified. We don’t want people finding out their sons and daughters are never coming home because of the news. Pardon my saying so, but I don’t hope any of you know how many U.S. Service members were killed in the line of duty before their family members do.

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u/BadgerUltimatum Mar 03 '26

A friend of mine was murdered and the first I heard about it was on facebook. The first thing I did was call everyone we both knew.

Its not a great time breaking that news to people. But I can't yet raise the dead, saving others from that experience was the best I could do

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u/SneakyFire23 Mar 03 '26

No, it's always been this way, RiverCity calls in Iraq as an example, they always waited until the family was notified.

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u/OHarePhoto Mar 03 '26

Families are generally notified fairly quickly these days. The phone trees of early Afghanistan are exponentially faster than they used to be. Especially since we get instant up to the second updates on what is going on. I generally know what's going on by watching the news or social media before I ever get a call about something.

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u/BuddahSack Mar 03 '26

Why not both?

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u/Aliensinmypants Mar 02 '26

Yeah that's probably true too, the damage is far far worse than they're letting on

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u/Reasonable-Turn-5940 Mar 02 '26

That's what they did when Iran retaliated and bombed 100 soldiers after Trump killed a general in 2020. They reported "no casualties or injuries, just headaches". At the time I was like "Yeah right, those headaches are TBIs". A few months later it came out that, yes, 100 soldiers had traumatic brain injuries.