Why America Lost the Vietnam War & Is Already Losing the Iran War

24 July 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

As told by the retired CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson:

https://www.youtube.com/live/Y0gq8JpEBpg?t=463s

“BREAKING: TRUMP TO BOMB IRAN’S NUCLEAR CENTRIFUGES – w/ Fmr. CIA Larry Johnson”

21 July 2026, Mario Nawfal

07:43

>> NAWFAL: Do you think the

07:44

Israelis are looking for justification

07:46

to convince Trump back into the war?

07:49

>> LARRY C. JOHNSON: I think they [the centrifuges] were already there. I

07:52

don’t think they [Iran] moved anything. What

07:54

they were talking about moving was

07:55

enriched uranium, which they I think they

07:57

did move, and it was secure and despite

08:00

Trump’s, you know, wildly specious

08:03

claims that he obliterated it, had wiped it

08:06

out. Hey, we ended the nuclear threat!

08:09

And again, you had Defense Intelligence

08:12

Agency coming out within, you know,

08:14

within a week of that, saying, “Nah, not

08:16

so fast there, cowboy.”

08:19

And he got fired, fired. Again, you wonder

08:21

why there’s a bubble of silence around

08:23

him [Trump, like had been around LBJ]. When people present him with

08:26

opposing information, he FIRES them.

08:30

You’ve got to understand a

08:32

government bureaucrat. Uh you’re, you got

08:35

your career

08:37

and unless you’re independently wealthy,

08:39

unless you’ve won like the lottery or

08:42

you come from a millionaire family,

08:44

uh you need the job and you want and you

08:47

don’t want to get demoted and you don’t

08:48

want to get fired, you want to be able

08:50

to, you know, uh go into retirement with

08:53

a good pension.

08:55

You know, one of one of the few intelligence

08:57

analysts in history that had, you know,

09:01

what they call [ __ ] you money was Sam

09:04

Adams.

09:06

Sam Adams [of the Founding Adams famly] was the senior analyst in the

09:10

Vietnam

09:11

division, Southeast Asian division back

09:14

then. His boss was a guy named George

09:17

Allen. I was fortunate to have been

09:20

trained in the new analyst course by

09:22

George Allen. Yeah, he was a man in his

09:27

Oh,

09:28

so I guess he was a World War II vet. So

09:31

he was in he was in his late 60s, early

09:34

70s back in 1985.

09:38

Uh so 844. Yeah. So uh and and you know

09:43

George was very candid talking about his

09:46

experience where he was I mean he was

09:48

getting calls from the national security

09:51

adviser at the time McGeorge Bundy

09:54

the secretary of defense Robert McNamera

09:58

and even from Lyndon Baines Johnson

10:00

himself said hey why aren’t you being a

10:02

team player

10:04

because the CIA was saying that the

10:06

department of defense claims about all

10:08

the Vietnamese

10:10

soldiers they had killed and the

10:11

Vietnamese army was weak. So this was in

10:14

‘ 68

10:16

just prior to Tet or ‘ 67 just prior

10:20

to Tet and Sam Adams who had been on the

10:23

ground uh in Vietnam. But Sam came, he

10:27

was wealthy. I mean he he had you know

10:31

he had he he could he could lose the job

10:34

and he’d still he could live the rest of

10:36

his life comfortably.

10:38

And he he refused to budge. He’d go, “No,

10:42

no, they were they’re not going to

10:43

threaten me. They’re not going to,

10:44

they’re not going to coerce me.” And uh

10:48

you know, George talked about what a

10:49

difficult difficult time it was because

10:51

George didn’t have a million dollar, you

10:54

know, a million plus dollar funds

10:57

sitting in the bank.

10:59

He had two kids getting ready to

11:01

graduate high school that were going to

11:03

college at the time back in ‘ 67. Uh so

11:08

uh you know yeah he was he was probably

11:11

in his mid mid40s then and um you know so

11:18

uh he you know he didn’t cave but he he

11:22

he took a lot of slings and arrows. So

11:25

that’s why today I don’t think you’ve

11:27

got anybody in the analytical side

11:29

that’s sitting there on a million

11:30

dollars plus you know 10 million $50

11:33

million because if you sit on that kind

11:36

of money then you don’t have to worry

11:38

about being intimidated. You can say no

11:40

this this is my honest judgment and if

11:42

you don’t like it, too bad.

11:48

>> NAWFAL: Well this is the report that came in. I

11:49

I’ll read it now since it’s relevant.

11:52

Now this is from um the Telegraph and

11:54

then there’s another one from Washington

11:56

Post. Sources say a culture of silence

11:59

has taken hold of defense sec as defense

12:02

secretary gains reputation for purging

12:04

senior military figures. So as Hegseth is

12:07

purging all these different figures. A

12:09

culture of silence has taken hold of the

12:12

administration. Rumors are spreading

12:14

across the administration that the

12:15

Pentagon is concealing a shortage of

12:18

interceptor missiles. Um, there are also

12:21

suggestions that the White House does

12:22

not know about the scale of the

12:24

shortfall. Sharing bad news, so this is

12:27

a a source that says the following. An

12:29

insider says, “Sharing bad news or

12:31

realistic news doesn’t seem to end well

12:34

for anybody.” Another said, “A culture

12:36

of silence was causing problems for

12:38

Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense of

12:40

War.”

12:42

So that’s according to the Telegraph.

12:44

And then there’s another one by the

12:45

Washington Post that says the same

12:46

thing. A Washington Post independent

12:49

from the Telegraph reported on the fact

12:50

that the Pentagon officials are hiding

12:52

the missile shortage from the defense

12:54

secretary and other high-ups higherups

12:57

fearful of punishments for not bringing

12:59

in good news from Iran.

13:02

>> JOHNSON: Well, and so this, you know, this like a

13:06

combat leader, if if you’re in combat

13:10

and you try to tell the leader, hey,

13:12

there there’s an amb — we go down this

13:14

path, there’s an ambush, they’re going

13:15

to blow our ass up, and he says, hey,

13:19

you’re on you’re on KP duty, you know,

13:21

so you get punished or or worse, you

13:24

know, worse than KP duty, you know,

13:26

demoted, whatever. All the other guys

13:29

look around and go,

13:32

>> NAWFAL: “Yeah,

13:33

>> JOHNSON: Okay. Let him walk into the ambush. Let

13:35

him get his ass blown up.”

13:36

Well, that’s what’ll happen. They’ll

13:39

they’ll let him get blown up

13:41

figuratively in this case. So, yeah,

13:44

it’s that’s a bad situation. Look, u a good

13:49

leader is one who’s willing to entertain

13:52

bad news,

13:54

even if it doesn’t agree with what they

13:56

want to believe. that you’ve got to be

13:58

strong enough to say, you know, to

14:01

recognize that someone’s not playing

14:02

you. I mean, you always have to take

14:04

into that into account. Could it be that

14:07

this is bad information? Well, then they

14:08

say, “Okay, why do you believe this?

14:11

Show me the numbers.” …

——

49:34

Those radars, you know, the the the big

49:36

radars that were hit in the early days

49:37

of the war, the destruction of these

49:39

radars, we’re starting to see the

49:40

consequences of it. Because these radars —

…

50:16

Remember, that’s what

50:18

the uh you know in the in the first days

50:22

the first during that first 43 days Iran

50:25

made it a priority of taking out uh all

50:30

of the major they they took out 12 to 19

50:33

radar and satcom systems across those

50:37

seven countries in the Gulf. uh and and

50:41

that included this uh you know the these

50:46

advanced you know they’re two billion

50:48

dollar plus radars and then there were

50:51

several radars that were three to $500

50:55

million a piece they took them all out

50:58

and so now the United States is

51:00

basically blind, it has to rely upon Awax

51:03

to possibly get an early warning that

51:05

something’s coming and you know That’s

51:09

where I think Iran’s moved on now to the

51:11

let’s call it the second phase where now

51:14

that they’ve blinded the United States

51:17

that they’ve taken out all the air

51:18

defense systems

51:20

they can just they can hit targets at

51:22

will, which they are doing.

51:25

…

——

MY COMMENT: In a fascist dictatorship, the liars and self-deceivers for war are protected because the billionaires profit from wars; meanwhile, the truth-tellers who expose them get fired and suffer for their courageous defense of truth. And what are the public for? To fight and die from the billionaires’ wars, and to pay for them via taxes.

Even the retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who had been a supporter of the arch-fascist late Senator John McCain and never encountered a U.S. invasion that he didn’t favor, told the same program host (Nawfal) on July 24th, “You should have contrarians, people with questioning attitudes, you should have healthy discourse. You know, Pete Hegseth’s first thought is not necessarily the right — by the way, you know, no Secretary of Defense is right on their first guess — you’ve got to have a process to vet these things, and you subvert that when the penalty for disagreement is firing.” So, the difference here isn’t like that between Johnson versus Montgomery, goodness versus evilness — all neocons (advocates of achieving an all-encompassing U.S. empire) are (like ANY imperialism is) evil, and Johnson certainly isn’t a neocon, as Montgomery is — it’s instead intelligence versus stupidity. And Trump is both, whereas Montgomery is only evil, not (like Trump) also stupid.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.