Fake News: CENTCOM Fires Back at Mainstream Media Claims of Abject Misery Aboard USS Abraham Lincoln

RedState 

The reports are everywhere — miserable conditions supposedly aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, including food shortages, broken plumbing, widespread exhaustion, and plummeting morale. It’s so bad, these reports say, that some sailors have attempted to jump overboard and presumably drown. Breathless headlines like “Conditions on US aircraft carrier at sea for more than 250 days raise alarms” are rampant.

Democrat lawmakers like Richard "Da Nang Dick" Blumenthal (D-CT) are demanding answers and writing strongly worded letters.

The U.S. military was already preparing to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment, which will bring the Lincoln's more than (so far) 260+ days of service at sea to an end.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) had something to say about all the reports Thursday evening: many of them are complete BS.

🚫CLAIM: Over the past 48 hours, multiple media outlets have reported several false claims related to USS Abraham Lincoln's (CVN 72) deployment to the Middle East. One report alleged seven Sailors died in a brawl aboard the aircraft carrier and others have recently suggested a spike in suicidal ideations. These reports are FALSE.

As a matter of fact, according to the Pentagon, the Lincoln has among the highest crew reenlistment rates at 84.4 percent, and a sailor who fell overboard was quickly rescued. Meanwhile, they pointed out that the story about seven service members dying in a knife fight originated from, where else, Iranian state media. 

They had more:

✅ FACT: USS Abraham Lincoln has maintained among the highest crew reenlistment rates (84.4%) of all aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy. The Sailors and Marines of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group remain resilient and resolved after more than 260 days at sea, 10,000 aircraft flights, and 1.5 million pounds of ordnance expended. No service members aboard the aircraft carrier have died, and the one Sailor who fell overboard Aug. 3 was quickly and safely recovered. The rampant misreporting on Abraham Lincoln's historic deployment is a disservice to our men and women in uniform and their loved ones.

This father claims his daughter is doing just fine:

It certainly has been a long deployment with very few port calls — although the USS Gerald completed a longer 326-day one that ended in May. I don’t doubt that it can be physically and mentally exhausting, and that not everything has gone perfectly with the food and the plumbing, as military families have credibly reported on. We’re talking about professionals, though, and they have trained long and hard for exactly this type of difficult mission. War is never comfortable. 

I never want to minimize the sacrifice and hardships that face our American heroes, but I also won’t start buying into the more serious morale and operational issues claims until I see concrete evidence from someone more credible than the Iranian propaganda machine, the mainstream news, or the always-shrieking Democrats.

In the meantime, God bless our troops.