Mark Moyar

South Vietnamese don't have enough fuel for their aircraft.

And to defend something like South Vietnam, you need aircraft.

They don't have enough ammunition.

And this gradually gets worse and worse.

And so the North Vietnamese see this and launch an offensive in Vietnam.

early 75, and they kind of wait to see, too, are the Americans going to come do anything?

By this time, Nixon's gone.

The Americans don't do anything.

And so the North Vietnamese then are able to, with 600,000 troops, defeat this depleted South Vietnamese force.

Yeah, that's right.

And he will catch a lot of heat.

Yeah, as you said, he was a brilliant man.

McNamara also, again, brilliant guy, but yet they commit some terrible strategic blunders, which, again, I think this was not a foregone conclusion that it was going to end the way it did.

You had both of those guys making mistakes.

in a very terrible decision now you also had mcnamara and nixon who you know listened to these guys and then that's part of the problem is they thought well these guys are so smart they must know what they're talking about um now we do know in the case of mcnamara johnson actually near the end of his presidency concludes that mcnamara doesn't know what he's talking about because mcnamara wants to in late 67 he wants to cut the bombing because he says bombing's really not doing anything but there's so much information that says it's in fact doing things that

McNamara has become diluted.

And yeah, Nixon also, excuse me, Kissinger commits some huge and costly mistakes.

I mean, another thing he does is he comes up with this whole agreement with the North Vietnamese before he even shows it to the South Vietnamese.

And then keeping the North Vietnamese troops there is not the only huge problem they have in there.

And Kissinger didn't even appreciate that