The USS Abraham Lincoln Has Been Stuck at Sea a Record 260+ Days — Its 6,000 Sailors Rationed to Corn Dogs and Tuna-and-Noodles, With Moldy Showers and a Mental-Health Crisis — Because Iran Destroyed the Navy's Main 5th Fleet Supply Base in Bahrain on Day One of the War, a Strategic Defeat Journalist David Rohde Says Hegseth Hid While Calling the Reporting "Completely Misrepresented"
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed at sea for more than 260 days — the longest modern carrier deployment on record, roughly nine months — supporting Trump's war on Iran. Its crew of about 6,000 has endured food shortages so severe that meals were reportedly reduced for stretches to tuna mixed with noodles or corn dogs, along with moldy showers, broken facilities, and 12-to-16-hour shifts without days off; families and journalists describe a mental-health crisis so acute that some sailors reportedly tried to jump overboard (the Navy denies the latter). The root cause is not bad luck. On the first day of the war, Iranian missiles and drones destroyed much of the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain — the 5th Fleet's decades-old sustainment hub for carrier operations. With Bahrain gone and the waters inside the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, the Navy fell back on the tiny, remote island of Diego Garcia, which Iran then also struck. The carrier's resupply collapsed. As journalist David Rohde and other reporters have laid out, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concealed the strategic significance of losing that base — the fact that Iran had knocked out America's main regional logistics hub — because it is direct evidence the war is going badly. Confronted with the reporting on the Lincoln's conditions, Hegseth called it "completely misrepresented" and attacked the press, as Sen. Chuck Schumer called for his firing and Sen. Ruben Gallego, a combat veteran, demanded an immediate bipartisan investigation.