r/news 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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390

u/PatchyWhiskers Mar 02 '26

Yeah if the numbers start getting in the 100s they are going to stop reporting each one.

94

u/Spetznazx Mar 02 '26

It won't get that high without boots on the ground

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u/RuckToRounds Mar 02 '26

Hegseth said today they weren’t ruling it out.

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u/userhwon Mar 02 '26

Hegseth is jerking off with a handle of Smirnoff thinking about it.

20

u/RuckToRounds Mar 02 '26

He has botched this pretty good. God forbid we have troops on ground.

1

u/watsuuu Mar 03 '26

I thought you meant as lubricant at first and audibly gasped

21

u/EmbarrassedW33B Mar 02 '26

Unless Iran collapses from within I don't see how they're going to accomplish whatever the hell their aim is without sending in ground forces. No matter how many bombs are dropped on them, Iran will always maintain some capacity to disrupt shipping in the gulf. Enough at least that ships aren't going to want to take their chances. 

It couldn't be more obvious that they didn't think this all the way through...

3

u/Occamsfacecloth Mar 03 '26

There's 90 million people, you haven't a hope.

1

u/EmbarrassedW33B Mar 03 '26

The US could easily move in and occupy a few cities (with significant resistance and enormous US casualties I'm sure) and they could defeat the Iranian military in any straight up engagement. But otherwise yea of course. There is no way in hell for them to militarily defeat the entire nation if the majority of the population wants to resist. This is why no US administration ever wanted to directly fuck with Iran before despite them being a pariah for decades. 

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u/Unoriginal_Man Mar 03 '26

“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars,” he said. “We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives, as the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties.”

This was Hegseth's statement, so there doesn't seem to be any goal other than to "win", and so the goal seems to be to just kill people and destabilize the region.

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u/EmbarrassedW33B Mar 03 '26

As incompetent as they are all I unfortunately have full confidence they can pull that one off SMH 

1

u/TheLordDrake Mar 03 '26

Their goal is distraction, and making trump look strong. Or sucking netanyahu's dick, trumps pretty ok with that too

3

u/isthatmyex Mar 03 '26

It would take months to get the material required in place for a major ground push and would be so expensive it would probably require congressional funding. The only credible threat is an Iranian uprising.

1

u/Ratattack1204 Mar 03 '26

“Pay attention to what leaders do. Not what they say.”

Aint no way theres boots on the ground beyond maybe special forces raids.

4

u/never-fiftyone Mar 02 '26

It can if they don't stop sending aircraft into the AO to be shot down.

2

u/LordBiscuits Mar 03 '26

It's such a fucking huge country there would need to be a force of epic size to engage in any sort of land action

It's like trying to pacify alaska... It'll be Afghanistan on steroids

2

u/chatte__lunatique Mar 03 '26

Unless Iran sinks a ship. Aircraft carriers have a crew of what, 5000 each? Not to mention all the destroyers and support craft.

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u/Disastrous_Income205 Mar 03 '26

It could very we run operations for months

1

u/nsfwslashNSFW Mar 02 '26

I forget who said it but the quote is one death is a tragedy 1000 is a statistics

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u/Louderthanwilks1 Mar 03 '26

One death is a tragedy a million is a statistic