As he rhapsodizes in his Iran war briefings about maximum violent death and destruction “without mercy,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could be back in Iraq two decades ago, when he was a platoon leader attached to a unit nicknamed “Kill Company.”

Officially designated Company C, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team (the Rakkasans) of the 101st Airborne Division, the unit maintained a white Dry-Erase board dubbed “the kill board” that kept a running body count.

“Let the bodies hit the floor,” read a notation at the bottom.

The board was erased after somebody added to the tally by including a pregnant Iraqi woman fatally shot at a roadblock.

But Hegseth—who was a Minnesota National guard lieutenant attached to the company and by his own account was teasingly called “National Garbage” by a regular army sergeant—wrote approvingly of the kill, kill, kill approach to warfare in his subsequent book The War On Warriors.

And, when he insisted during the first briefing of the Iran war that there would be “no stupid rules of engagement,” he seemed unconcerned by what Iraq showed can happen in their absence.

Four soldiers from another platoon of “Kill Company” were convicted of criminal charges arising from the killing of three unarmed Iraq........

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