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Amid growing pressure on the Biden administration in the wake of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin going MIA for nearly four days as he was in the ICU of Walter Reed hospital but without telling anyone at the White House (as basic long-standing national security protocol would require), new details have been unearthed which reveal the situation to have been far worse (and comical) than previously known.

Not only was there no one officially at the helm of the Department of Defense at a moment Iran-backed militias targeted US bases in the Iraq-Syria region, but Austin's #2 was "running the Pentagon" from the beach, apparently.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. Image source: DOD

Austin and his staffers have tried to paint a picture that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks was basically running things. But while Hicks is said to have been tasked with "some duties" during Austin's absence – it remains that she was on vacation and didn't so much as know that her boss was out of commission.

According to fresh details in The Wall Street Journal, Hicks was literally on a beach in Puerto Rico—and what's worse is that she stayed on vacation even as Austin was laid up:

The comedy of errors was compounded from there. It would be hard to make this up…

So Hicks, who found herself in charge (somewhat unknowingly perhaps) of the world's most powerful military, and at a moment the US is engaged in several hotspots from Ukraine to Syria to the Red Sea, decided that she must sacrifice walks on the sandy beaches.

During that very time, the Pentagon was engaged in some high-risk aerial operations against Iran-linked groups in Iraq. The WSJ underscores there was nothing about that week that was mere "business as usual": 

That very strike has triggered Iraq government efforts to boot American troops from the country to gain steam and popularity in the region.

But important to emphasize is that the person who was effectively acting secretary of defense stayed on her vacation, in a posh hotel room, only "foregoing walks" – as we are assured. More broadly, there was a window of days where it seems that simply no one was actually in charge of the US armed forces.