"I find it hard to believe that was the first time they told him," Mark Cancian, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Newsweek. "This is an unusual situation because it's at the front-end of a conflict so it would get very high level attention."
Cancian formerly worked on war funding, force development and procurement programs at the Office of Management and Budget and in the Pentagon. He also spent three decades serving in the Marines Corps.
Casualty numbers are routinely factored into a briefing on any strike, he said, and the military has sophisticated tools designed to predict weapons effects. According to Cancian, one program, nicknamed "bug splat," is specifically used to calculate potential casualties and other symptoms of war.
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Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel for the Department of Defense, tweeted that the president's story doesn't make sense.
"Story doesn't add up. For one thing the General would not have "to get back to you on that" for estimated casualties. It would be right there in black and white as part of Concept of Operation. Is Trump suggesting the Pentagon brought him a plan without having those figures?" Goodman wrote in one post.
