Congressional Democrats are pressing the Trump administration for answers regarding the delayed medical care of wounded US soldiers after a drone strike in Kuwait on March 1, which occurred just days into the US-Israel war on Iran.
Letter Demands Answers
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Pat Ryan, lawmakers posed 23 questions about the strike on a US logistics hub at the port of Shuaiba, south of Kuwait City. The letter, sent Wednesday, demands a response by August 12.
A single Iranian drone evaded air defenses and struck the relocated operations center of the US Army's 103rd Sustainment Command, killing six reservists from Des Moines, Iowa, and wounding dozens more. It marked the first US combat deaths of Operation Epic Fury, the war launched by President Trump alongside Israel on February 28.
Medical Care Delays
The unit had requested additional medical staff and supplies before the strike but was denied, according to reports from the Washington Post and CBS News cited in the letter. After the attack, there was no doctor on site, no fixed aid station, and only one ambulance. Some wounded soldiers drove themselves to a hospital in Kuwait City. It took nine days before roughly two dozen soldiers, some still unscreened for brain injuries, were flown to the US military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany.
“Doctors told them that because they hadn’t been recorded as medical evacuees on the flight’s manifest or as seriously injured in [the defense department’s] casualty-processing database, they could only get limited treatment and had to wait in nearby barracks because the hospital was unable to admit them,” the letter states.
Soldiers later sent to Fort Hood, Texas, reportedly went weeks without seeing a doctor able to diagnose traumatic brain injury, despite repeatedly failing post-blast cognitive tests. Families told CBS News that the Army downplayed the severity of individual wounds.
Casualty Count Questions
The letter also questions the Pentagon's official casualty count for the war on Iran, which dropped from 18 to 14 on July 23. The Pentagon blamed a data problem, but lawmakers cited reporting that officials privately said four service members—three killed in Jordan and one in northern Iraq on July 17 and 18—were dropped because their deaths occurred after Trump's declared ceasefire in April, even though strikes had resumed on July 7.
Those four deaths, plus more than 200 wounded, have since been filed under a new “Overseas Operations” category, rather than counted as part of Epic Fury. This follows an earlier episode where about 100 troops injured in strikes on Jordan went undisclosed until reporters asked questions.
Internal Review Concerns
The letter also questions the independence of the Army's internal review. Initially, a mid-career officer under the unit's commander was assigned to the inquiry, before a senior officer and Army Central Command took over. Soldiers questioned in the process came away with the impression that, as one put it, “we are investigating ourselves and found no wrongdoing,” according to the Washington Post.
Broader Scrutiny
This is the second time in a week a US senator has pressed the Pentagon on the war. On July 24, Senator Tim Kaine demanded answers by August 14 about pre-selected target lists after a February 28 strike on a school in Minab, Iran, killed more than 150 civilians, most of them children. Kaine said he was “deeply concerned about the inclusion of a school in Minab, Iran, on the lists of verified targets.”
In the latest letter, lawmakers noted that at least 18 service members have been killed and more than 620 wounded in the war since February. “As you and President Trump continue to risk the lives of service members in this reckless war, the American people deserve answers on whether you were adequately prepared to protect service members from Iranian attacks and get them the care they needed,” they wrote, “and whether you will be prepared to do so if the war continues and escalates even further.”
