Reaction continues to pour in during these early days of the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg stopped in the Lehigh Valley on Monday for a campaign event for congressional hopeful Bob Brooks.<\/p>\n
69 News reporter Amelia Sack spoke with Buttigieg to get his thoughts on what’s happening in the Middle East, following the U.S. air strikes in Iran.<\/p>\n
“I can’t stop thinking about the Americans who have given their lives in this war, and the president has told us to expect more casualties,” says Buttigieg, former U.S. Secretary Of Transportation and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.<\/p>\n
Six American service members have been killed and 18 others are seriously wounded, as of Monday night.<\/p>\n
“As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell, and always will be,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n
Buttigieg questioned the necessity of the war.<\/p>\n
“He hasn’t explained to Americans why he had no other choice than to go to war. He hasn’t even bothered to go to Congress. He told us that he already obliterated the nuclear program of Iran almost a year ago now, so what exactly is the imminent threat?” says Buttigieg.<\/p>\n
It’s unclear how long the conflict will rage on, though Hegseth maintains that the mission of the war remains certain.<\/p>\n
“The mission of Operation Epic Fury is laser-focused: destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure, and they will never have nuclear weapons,” says Hegseth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reaction continues to pour in during these early days of the conflict in the Middle East. Former U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,805],"class_list":["post-128474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}