Lawrence: Trump & Hegseth 'not telling how much damage there really was' by Iran war to Navy base

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The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell starts right now. Hey Lawrence.

Lawrence O'Donnell (0:59)

Hey Jen. We have Troy Jackson joining us from Maine tonight, where he appears to be ahead of Susan Collins by a point or two at this point.

SPEAKER_5 (1:10)

Yeah, that's, it's going to be a race to watch. I was just there two weeks ago. It's a really exciting one. He's only been a candidate as the nominee for a couple months.

Lawrence O'Donnell (1:19)

And he's doing, you know, he's doing a great job in the debates. He has maybe the line of the season about Can't Eat Road Salt, most memorable debate line I've heard.

SPEAKER_5 (1:30)

That was a particularly good one. And he is also being helped by Susan Collins having trouble explaining all sorts of her positions over the course of time.

Lawrence O'Donnell (1:41)

Thanks, Jen. Thanks, Lawrence. Thanks. They're not telling the truth. They're not telling the full story.

They're not telling how much damage there really was.

That statement was made by a witness to Donald Trump's war in an important new reporting by MS NOW's Priya Sridhar. The truth is emerging months after the fact because unlike all American combat in the Middle East since the first American-led war in Iraq in 1991, Donald Trump's war will not be televised. General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of President George HW. Bush's war against Saddam Hussein's aggression against Kuwait, was a constant figure on American television during that first Gulf War, updating the news media while news networks' war correspondents were in the thick of the action delivering video images of airstrikes and other attacks in real time. That modern model of virtually live televised war coverage continued with President George HW. Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But with Donald Trump, a pathological liar, obviously prepared to lie about how his war is going, there was never a chance that American war correspondents would be granted their usual access to covering the combat as it happens in real time. Donald Trump seems to have known from the start that he might just might want to be able to lie about how well his war was going, as he has done from the start and as he did once again today.

SPEAKER_3 (3:33)

And as you know, we're doing very well with Iran.

Mark Hertling (3:35)

We just have to make a final decision of which way do we want to win.

Troy Jackson (3:38)

Do we want to win the nice way or the not nice way?

SPEAKER_2 (3:42)

But we're doing very well.

Mark Hertling (3:44)

We don't need any help.

Lawrence O'Donnell (3:47)

And now we know that it was utter chaos, according to a witness to and survivor of the Iranian attack on the United States Navy's only Navy base in the Middle East, the headquarters for the Navy's fifth fleet in Bahrain. In past wars, there would have been American war correspondents at that Navy base, who probably would have felt reasonably safe until the attack occurred, but then would have swung into action documenting exactly what happened as it was happening. And what happened was historic. It was the worst destruction of an American Navy base since the early days of World War II.

We have not been allowed to know how bad the damage was. War photographers have not been allowed anywhere near that damage. But a report to Congress notes one unnamed US official saying that the American Navy base was, quote, nearly destroyed.

The nearly destroyed headquarters of the Navy's Fifth Fleet at the base called Naval Support Activity Bahrain, NSA Bahrain, may never be rebuilt. That's how bad the damage is. They may never rebuild it. One estimate says the base suffered $400 million of damage to critical facilities. The Navy learned lessons after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that started America's involvement in World War II. Because of the strategic locations chosen for Navy bases since then, and the military's hypervigilance in defending those Navy bases, we have not lost a Navy base since the early days of World War II. The Vietnam War dragged on for over a decade, and we never lost a Navy base. In the so-called forever wars of the 21st century, we never lost a Navy base, such as the enormity of the strategic blunders of Donald Trump and his defense secretary Pete Hegseth, that they left the only American Navy base in the Middle East vulnerable to an attack so damaging that that base may never be rebuilt.