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Pentagon Finally Counts an Iran War Death — Six Months Late

After months of questions from The Intercept, the U.S. military finally acknowledged the March death of Maj. Sorffly Davius.

The Pentagon quietly acknowledged additional Iran war deaths on Friday evening after The Intercept repeatedly demanded an explanation for inaccurate statistics on a War Department website tracking U.S. casualties from the conflict.

Almost 900 U.S. troops have been wounded or killed in the war with Iran, according to the official Pentagon count, including the two deaths added on Friday. This raises the Pentagon’s total to 21 dead.

The additional war dead include Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and died while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6. For more than six months, The Intercept has raised Davius’s case in dozens of emails and phone conversations with Pentagon officials and publicly in 10 articles.

The Pentagon recently revamped the website of the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS — which provides official counts of dead and wounded for Congress and the White House — to include more detailed casualty category tables. But it initially listed no “non-hostile” illness or injury fatalities, despite the Pentagon announcing in March that Davius died “as a result of a non-combat related incident.”

At first, the military claimed that Davius was involved in another operation instead of Epic Fury — the original designation of the Iran war. Two weeks ago, however, The Intercept revealed that a recent National Guard news release admitted that when “President Donald Trump made the decision to attack Iran and launched Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28, the [42nd Infantry] division headquarters began conducting combat operations.” The 42nd served as the primary headquarters leading what became, according to Maj. Gen. Jack James, the division commander, the “largest and first long-range precision fires campaign in the history of the United States Army.” James specifically saluted Davius, whom the Guard admitted was “conducting operations” when he died.

Last week, The Intercept pointed the Pentagon to the non-hostile illness or injury casualty count for Epic Fury on the website, and emphasized its tally showing zero deaths was not possible.

“I will check within,” Patricia Kreuzberger, a Pentagon spokesperson said on Tuesday. “Let me reach out to leadership.”

Three days later, and after repeated follow-up messages on Friday, the tally was updated, to 1.

In addition to Davius, the DCAS death count now also includes an unidentified Navy suicide that occurred last month, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. DCAS currently lists this death as “pending,” despite the recent........

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