Americans haven’t forgotten how, even as hundreds of U.S. soldiers were dying in Vietnam, and the outcome was already clear, General William Westmoreland was flown home to reassure everyone that the war was going well — that the U.S. was “winning.”

The media haven’t forgotten either; those briefings full of fantasy from the frontlines became infamous as the “Five O’Clock Follies."

Fast forward to today: same script, different stage; Hegseth steps up, and the message is still detached from reality.

U.S. government says one thing, reality says another
Right as U.S. authorities claim Iran’s air defences r gone, an F-35 gets hit. As they declare Iran’s navy finished, USS Gerald Ford turns back, and USS Abraham Lincoln drifts farther away
Different decade, same “we’re winning”

U.S. military sustainers are on top of their game.

We are doing extremely well in Iran.

The difference between them and us is that they had a navy two weeks ago; they have no navy anymore.

It's all at the bottom of the sea — 58 ships knocked down in two days.

When I mentioned the navy that we just destroyed, I said, “Are they good ships?” “Yeah, they’re great ships.”

Then I said, “Why didn’t we save them? We could’ve used them ourselves.”

They said the difference was that they didn’t know how to use them.

Now nobody wants to be a leader over there anymore.

We're having a hard time. We want to talk to them, and there's nobody to talk to.

And you know what? We like it that way.

Iran wanted to take over the Middle East.

The attacks that took place in Türkiye and Oman—both of which have good relations with us—against certain locations in those countries were in no way carried out by the armed forces of the Islamic Republic or other forces of the Resistance Front.

This is a deception by the Zionist enemy, using a false-flag tactic to create division between the Islamic Republic and its neighbors, and it may also occur in some other countries.

I have much more power in my second term.

We're the greatest military in the world, the strongest, the greatest, and we're proving that when you can take Venezuela in a matter of minutes.

It’s not even a contest. They do whatever they want.

They had a lot of great equipment, Russian and Chinese equipment. That equipment was useless against us.

No force on earth can beat the American sailors or the American military — we're the strongest in the world by far.