United States Army soldiers are training to bury fellow comrades in temporary graves en masse for the first time in decades, in a dress rehearsal for a scenario in which it sustained a high number of casualties in combat.
Soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, along with support staff like military chaplains, used diggers and excavators to see how effective they could be used to preserve dead bodies until they could be identified and expatriated.
The Army says this hasn’t been needed since the Korean conflict.
Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Brett Sylvia, a director for strategy, plans and policy on the Joint Staff. In that role he reported to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The dismissal was centered on Hegseth’s campaign of administering mass lie detector tests to find and punish leakers.
The Pentagon says that Gen. Sylvia failed polygraph tests three times.
Sylvia acknowledged that he knew and had conversations with at least one journalist while serving on the Joint Staff but denied sharing any sensitive or classified information, according to two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Senior Pentagon officials, including members of Hegseth’s staff, frequently talk to reporters.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Thursday that the Defense Department has “zero tolerance for the intentional, unauthorized disclosure of classified information” and that following an “extensive” internal investigation, the matter — “along with others” — had been referred to the Justice Department “for potential legal action.”
When asked about the firing of Gen. Sylvia, Trump used the wrong pronouns.
But wait, there’s more:
On Wednesday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made disturbing comments at an event hosted by the Middle East Institute.
Murphy was recently in a “fairly detailed” briefing about the Pentagon’s war plan.
Murphy said that he couldn’t share details of the plan, but, when asked to elaborate, he pointed to recent reporting on the campaigns that the Pentagon has drawn up on behalf of Trump and Hegseth.