Pentagon: 34 US Troops Have Traumatic Brain Injuries From Airstrike, Trump Dismissed Injuries As Headaches

Reuters reports:

The Pentagon said on Friday that 34 service members had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury following strikes by Iran on a base in Iraq earlier this month. Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told reporters that eight service members who had been previously transported to Germany had been moved to the United States.

From the military site Task & Purpose:

President Donald Trump’s comment Wednesday that U.S. troops suffering concussion-like symptoms had “not very serious” injuries clashed with a yearslong, hard-fought U.S. military campaign to spread the message that a brain injury is not something to be minimized. “I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things,” the president said Wednesday during a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. “But I would say, and I can report, it is not very serious, not very serious.”

Even if the final diagnoses are not all yet known, merely saying that such injuries are not serious conflicts with a growing body of medical evidence. Moreover, some say Trump also upended Pentagon efforts to get U.S. troops to tend to the invisible wounds of war, which have historically been considered less grave than outward bodily damage. Medical authorities have increasingly warned that even seemingly mild brain injuries, especially repeat ones, can have debilitating long-term effects.