Pentagon calls the same Iran strike a 'first' four different ways in one week.

As it ran on the front

Let this reporter be unambiguous: every strike this administration orders against Iranian positions is a discrete, deliberate, fully-briefed response to a specific and imminent threat stream. NBC called it the first strike in weeks. The Hill called it the first attack since late July. The Washington Examiner called it the first in over a month. The New York Post called it the first in weeks, again. Four outlets, four different 'firsts,' and this reporter would like to point out that is not a contradiction, that is redundancy for clarity, that is — hold on. That is actually four different strikes being called four different 'firsts' by four different outlets on four different premises, which means either the Pentagon briefed four different timelines to four different rooms, or nobody at the podium is actually counting. Did I say nobody's counting? That's not what I meant. What this reporter meant is that the Department of Defense maintains a complete, continuously updated operational log of every strike, its date, its target, and its legal justification, and that log is definitely available upon request, to the appropriate committees, eventually, in the fullness of time.

The point stands regardless: each strike responded to a live and specific threat — rocket launchers, mine-laying preparations in the Strait of Hormuz, a regime that vows revenge every single time, which this reporter notes is also getting repetitive, though in fairness so is bombing them. The administration is not engaged in a rolling, low-grade, undeclared campaign against Iran that resets its own odometer every time a new outlet picks up the wire copy. It is engaged in a series of unrelated, non-cumulative, entirely first-time events that happen, by coincidence, to occur roughly every two to three weeks, going back to at least late July, for reasons that remain, and will continue to remain, freshly urgent every time.…