Chrissy Houlahan
Role at the time: Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, in a joint statement with Rep. Adam Smith as reported by Mediaite
Statement summary
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, said in a joint statement with Rep. Adam Smith that there was no excuse for a mistake of this magnitude and that requiring Congress to step in to correct it was an embarrassment for the department.
“There is no excuse for a mistake of this magnitude. While we take seriously our duty to serve as the voice of the American people and hold the executive branch accountable as a co-equal branch of government, requiring Congress to step in to rectify such an egregious error is an embarrassment for the Department”
Mediaite report on the revised count. It quotes the full joint statement from Reps. Adam Smith and Chrissy Houlahan, which the Washington Post quotes in part.
Why we used this label
The case asks whether the Pentagon's public count of U.S. military deaths in the Iran war is complete. In a joint statement with Smith after the count rose to 21, Houlahan says there is "no excuse for a mistake of this magnitude" and calls it "an embarrassment for the Department" that Congress had to step in, which criticizes the Pentagon's accounting, so we labeled it Condemned. The closest competing label is Mixed or conditional; it loses because the quoted passage criticizes the error without softening it.