THE PENTAGON — A long-awaited Pentagon audit has confirmed the root cause of America’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s atrocious pull-up form, officials announced today.

“I figured the audit would just say what every vet bro already knows — that we lost because of DEI, fluoridated water, and Milley’s ‘Pegging for Pennies’ CFC fundraiser,” said SES Stuart Scheller, a senior advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, who now demands to be addressed only as ‘SES Scheller,’ ‘Warfighting 6,’ or ‘Petey’s Pixie.’

“But the findings shocked me so much you could’ve screwed me with a plastic chess piece in an abandoned school bus and I’d have forgotten to say ‘thank you.’ Turns out the real problem was Secretary Hegseth kipping like a goddamn boot on the pull-up bar.”

The audit detailed how Hegseth routinely failed to dead hang, lock out his arms, or break the plane with his chin — errors that senior officials now say directly caused the collapse of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“As Pete’s first wife would say, he’s as bad at pulling up as he is at pulling out,” Scheller lamented.

Fallout was swift. Zyn canceled its planned sponsorship of a “Hegseth Leg Day” competition. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell quietly deleted a tweet demanding all troops meet Marine Corps PT standards. And after reviewing the footage, fired Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown said he was “pretty sure” Hegseth blamed his poor form on the black pull-up bar.

Scheller admitted in hindsight the signs were always there.

“He loved to brag about the Bronze Stars he got for training local forces in counterterrorism,” Scheller said. “If only more of us watched the video of how he actually trained them, we could’ve saved our great nation a lot of embarrassment.”

At press time, Hegseth’s two ex-wives and five former mistresses issued a joint statement endorsing the audit’s findings, noting that none of them were surprised that he doesn’t go down all the way on pull-ups either.

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