Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I was promised a recession.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Let there be snark.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / North Korea Tests Another Missile

North Korea Tests Another Missile

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From US Pacific Command (USPACOM):

U.S. Pacific Command Detects, Tracks North Korean Missile Launch

By CDR David Benham | U.S. Pacific Command | April 04, 2017

CAMP H.M. SMITH, Hawaii — The U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean missile launch at 11:42 a.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, April 4. The launch of a single ballistic missile occurred at a land-based facility near Sinpo.

The missile was tracked until it landed in the Sea of Japan at 11:51 a.m.

Initial assessments indicate that the type of missile was a KN-15 medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM).

USPACOM is fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined that the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America.

An Administration official has issued the following statement:

A senior White House official issued a dire warning to reporters Tuesday on the state of North Korea’s nuclear program, declaring “the clock has now run out and all options are on the table.”

“The clock has now run out, and all options are on the table,” the official said, pointing to the failure of successive administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear program.
The senior White House official who issued Tuesday’s ominous missive also said North Korea is a “matter of urgent interest for the President and the administration as a whole” and emphasized that “all options are on the table.”
Those options could include stepped up economic sanctions — including against Chinese entities that do business with North Korea — cyberattacks or military action.
Earlier Tuesday, Gen. John Hyten, the commander of US Strategic Command, which oversees US nuclear weapons and missile defense forces, contradicted Trump, saying China was critical to solving the North Korea nuclear challenge.
As I wrote last week, the biggest issue here is that we have a dearth of expertise. While we do have a handful of really sharp subject matter experts on North Korea, we don’t have a lot. And most of the folks you’ll see opining on what to do are not these subject matter experts. And this deficit of knowledge is combined with a new Administration that is not properly or fully staffed. As a result Kim Jong Un, like Bashar al Assad and others, will continue to probe, prod, and push the new Administration to see what they can and cannot get away with.
Stay frosty!

Reader Interactions

244Comments

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    All the options are on the table…except diplomacy, because the only diplomat we know of is a fully charged phaser bank.

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: There are no appropriate, effective, feasible, acceptable, and/or suitable military solutions to this problem. There are precious few diplomatic, information, and/or economic solutions to this problem. Which one/ones do you think is the a priori preference?

  5. 5.

    Lizzy L

    Part of my post on the prior thread:

    The news from Syria is horrifying; the NK news is terrifying. I loathed GWB for getting us into war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I don’t recall ever thinking that he was likely to use nukes against anybody. I have no such confidence any more. In fact, I think it’s likely.

  7. 7.

    Davis X. Machina

    I don’t remember a couple of hundred thousand people getting killed in Wag the Dog.
    Maybe I didn’t watch it carefully enough.

    Remember what W said — all the great presidents were wartime presidents.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: What? We can’t just get all ‘splody and blow shit up and that solves the problem? What are few million lives in Busan and on Honshu compared to the brilliant military strategist who is Donald?

  12. 12.

    mai naem mobile

    White phone for Jared…urgent… white phone for Jared…white phone going red for Jared…

  13. 13.

    Suffragete City elftx

    But wouldn’t this hurt his business? Only half joking.

    Can’t imagine how people feel in Japan and South Korea after those statements.

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Major Major Major Major: Thank FSM for small favors. She might also borrow Bamz’s time machine, go back to 2001, and knock some sense into the deserting coward and the Dark Lord about the NKs.

  15. 15.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Trump is not going to do jack about North Korea. China wants him to ignore it. China is paying Trump a lot of money. So, in every effective sense, he’ll ignore it. Oh, there’ll be press statements about what a tough guy he is who will smack down evildoers unlike that candy-ass negro who poor white America had to endure for eight years of peace and prosperity. Much the same with Syria, but it’s Putin paying him.

  19. 19.

    mai naem mobile

    Dolt 45 is mad he can’t finish watching Sean Hannity. He really wanted to hear more about Chelsea Clinton’s furrin sounding Sumeet Hawt Yoga emails.

  20. 20.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:
    It’s so much easier when you don’t have to worry about information or expertise or negotiating tactics, and the President just does whatever he’s been bribed to do.

  21. 21.

    Jacel

    Remember when we were actually working through an agreement with North Korea negotiated during the Bill Clinton years? If I remember right, the Republican congress failed to approve or allocate for holding up the US end of the agreement, and any attempt to keep communicating broke down during the GWB years. Is that recollection off target?

  22. 22.

    Tokyokie

    It’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment against this psychotic piece of human shit. He’s going to get hundreds of thousands of people killed in the ROK and Japan by pretending he’s a tough guy with the lives of people who don’t matter even as much as the schmucks he’s conned domestically. But the GOP won’t do it, because cutting Alice Walton’s income taxes is more important to them than the lives of hundreds of thousands of Asians. I already knew that the Republican Party has become the party of corruption and treason, but I guess we can add mass murder to the list as well.

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jacel: No, it’s pretty much the thing. The deserting coward didn’t want to play the diplomacy game with the NKs either, even though as Adam points out there really is no military solution to this conundrum if you want to avoid mushrooms blooming around the Sea of Japan. The NKs are playing these amateur assholes, and the Chinese hold ALL the cards.

  24. 24.

    hovercraft

    @Adam L Silverman:

    There are no appropriate, effective, feasible, acceptable, and/or suitable military solutions to this problem. There are precious few diplomatic, information, and/or economic solutions to this problem. Which one/ones do you think is the a priori preference?

    But I’ve been told repeatedly that the only reason they were testing was that Obama was a weal appeaser who kept apologizing for America. Now that we have a strong, though, macho president, the missiles were supposed to stop and Assad would never gas his people again. The world and North Korea in particular are on notice.

  25. 25.

    Patricia Kayden

    I feel so safe with a madman in the White House surrounded by White Supremacists while his inexperienced Son-in-Law runs our foreign affairs. How quaint.

  30. 30.

    BBA

    I feel like the lawyer in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. “I kept wanting to call the police, but nothing had happened. Nothing at all had really happened.”

  31. 31.

    Corner Stone

    Let’s just glass NK and get this whole miserable fucking experiment over with.

  32. 32.

    jl

    @Villago Delenda Est: IIRC NK nuke program really took off after Dub and Dick ended the Bill Clinton ‘appeasement’. (edit: ‘really took off’ is relative, since AFAIK, we’re not even sure whether some of their nuke tests were fully successful, their arsenal of nuclear bombs is probably very unreliable).

    But who cares about results, when you can talk tough and preen?

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    North Korea fires a missle? Unpossible! We’ve been assured that Trump is the new sheriff in town and the whole world bows to his will.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    People would be livid if their favorite sports team were coached by someone this out of their depth.

  38. 38.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Matt Yglesias had a mini-tweet storm a couple of weeks ago saying that it was the “Axis of Evil” speech that drove the NK leadership to insist on completing their nuclear capabilities. Like I said, it was a few tweets, but it made sense. All to have a cool line in a speech, was how he summed it up.

    Found it.

    Matthew Yglesias‏Verified account @ mattyglesias Mar 16
    North Korea going nuclear is an under-noticed failure of the (still!) grossly overrated George W Bush administration.
    Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as a three-nation Axis of Evil then invaded Iraq even though Saddam didn’t have a nuclear program.
    DPRK made the reasonable calculation that it should get a nuclear deterrent ASAP, while the US was bogged down elsewhere.
    All for the sake of … adding a cool-sounding line to a speech.

    ETA: oddly enough, my new anti-trump BFF David Frum did not reply or respond

  39. 39.

    Mike J

    @LAC:

    I fucking hate this man and all the idiots that voted for him or sat on their asses.

    But Hillary Clinton made a speech. Don’t you understand? People paid her to say what she thinks. Nuclear holocaust is a small price to pay to avoid that.

  40. 40.

    joel hanes

    @Jacel:

    When WJC was Pres, North Korea had actually sealed some nuclear facilities, and we were monitoring the seals.

    Then W. found it beneath him to do the maintenance diplomacy, and they felt ignored and disrespected, and broke the seals and re-started their nuclear programs, with increased ambition.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Most of the dearth of expertise is into the social, cultural, political, ideological, religious, economic, and strategic decision-making that exists within both the Kim government and North Korea as a whole. I linked to the folks at the Center for Non-proliferation Studies. They’re great on the technical side of the missile tests. That’s very important. But it isn’t going to provide the context to Commander I Corps when he’s trying to figure out who his Soldiers are going to encounter once they proceed north of the DMZ or how they’re going to react and respond: militarily, socially, etc.

  44. 44.

    geg6

    @Mike J:

    Don’t get me started. I couldn’t despise anyone more than the media, Wilmerbots and, most of all, Republicans.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jacel: More or less. With one caveat: the US Ambassador to South Korea who was handling this stuff was dumb as a stump. He’d been the President of Emory University when I was an undergraduate. He actually wrote my Mom an exceedingly hostile and insulting letter while she was undergoing chemo for breast cancer! He had taken the Emory position because he thought it would get him an archbishopric in the Methodist Church. It is unclear how he wound up the political appointee ambassador to South Korea, but I’m sure Senator Nunn had something to do with it. We are very lucky he didn’t start a war. Complete and utter dumbass.

  49. 49.

    Corner Stone

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ahhh, Frum-dog. He can hate on Trump all you like but that POS ain’t ever getting over for his sins. I remember that speech so clearly and thinking, “What? What is wrong with you assholes?”
    Well, I guess he showed us.

  50. 50.

    mainmata

    If Trump was anything other than a corrupt and ignorant crime boss, he would use Xi Jinping’s visit to exert mutually beneficial pressure on the Chinese to address the NK problem once and for all. But he is a lousy negotiator and will, instead, focus on how many hotels he can build in China. We are in such trouble. Can we get him exposed as the blackmailed money laundering fool that he and his cohorts are? Of course we can but the FBI will drag their heels as long as possible. The Russian hacks are a distraction from the core problem that he is pwned by the Russians.

  54. 54.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: I don’t think so. It was IIRC a minor scandal when the line gave Conservatives a thrill up their legs and Mrs Frum started bragging that her husband wrote it. Dubya wanted to think he came up with it

  55. 55.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Even if we had this expertise all lined up and ready to brief, the I Corps Commander would listen to him, but no one in the White House has time for any of that gay understanding your enemy shit, it’s time to blow things up!

  56. 56.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    More than minor, I guess. I’d forgotten this part

    The public had a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the White House yesterday when David Frum, the man said to have invented the phrase “axis of evil”, resigned from President George Bush’s speechwriting team, causing a debate as to whether he walked out or was pushed.
    Mr Frum became well known after President Bush used the term in his state of the union address. But his celebrity came about only because his wife, Danielle, emailed friends with “wifely pride” to claim credit for her husband. The message was picked up by the media.
    This was considered an affront to the discreet and collegiate traditions of the speechwriters’ room, whose occupants are accustomed to having their precious words appropriated by the president, rewritten or scrapped, but are expected to remain stoically anonymous.

    ETA: he really was and is a douche, our temporary alliance (that he doesn’t know about) notwithstanding

    It’s not exactly clear whether David Frum knew that his phrase “axis of evil” would send shudders of fear and anger throughout the world when President Bush uttered it in the State of the Union address in January.
    But, says Frum, who coined the unforgettable invective to describe North Korea, Iraq and Iran, “I had a pretty good idea it would be remembered.”

  57. 57.

    Adam L Silverman

    @joel hanes: I have a sort of theory – its more than an explanation, less than a for X there’s Y – regarding the North Korean government’s behavior. It has always seemed to me that there is a discernible pattern. That whenever they feel they aren’t getting any attention or someone else is getting more attention they do something to get attention. In this way it is like dealing with a child (I’m not trying to infantilize the North Koreans), they act out in order to have the focus of attention shifted back to them. I’m not sure this sort of theory does us much good, especially as we really do not have a deep seated expertise understanding of how the North Korean government, decision-making, political culture, strategic culture, economic, political, social, religious, etc works to provide the context to understand what is actually going on. Including what is going on between them and the PRC.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That whenever they feel they aren’t getting any attention or someone else is getting more attention they do something to get attention.

    Can’t they just send out ridiculous tweets at 4 am like normal people?

  59. 59.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mainmata: Depends on the branch. I once studied with the Methodist Primate of Jerusalem, Archbishop Grauel. The only non-Jewish Haganah member on the Exodus 47.

  61. 61.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That whenever they feel they aren’t getting any attention or someone else is getting more attention they do something to get attention.

    Hey, I can think of somebody else who loves to act out whenever he thinks he isn’t getting as much attention as he deserves.

  64. 64.

    Jacel

    @Jacel: So much in the media for some time has taken a premise that it is absolutely impossible to talk with North Korea. It really wasn’t that long ago that progress was made. I suppose being named a key part of the “Axis of Evil” out of the blue sticks with a nation.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lizzy L: It’s possible. This is not my specialty area. I do know a fair amount about China, a lot about Japan and India and Sri Lanka and Indonesia and Nepal, but North Korea is a black box. So please take whatever I say with those caveats. Part of the problem is that since we don’t fully understand the relationship between the Kim government and the PRC we cannot be sure that Xi didn’t orchestrate this for his own benefit when he arrives in DC tomorrow for Thursday’s meetings.

  66. 66.

    Roger Moore

    @mainmata:

    Jefferson wasn’t actually in a war as President

    Neither were Washington or Teddy Roosevelt, which was rather my point. That’s 3/4 of the faces on Mt. Rushmore, which rather contradicts Shrub’s thesis. And, of course, the case of McKinley, Nixon, and both Bushes show the converse, that not all wartime presidents have been great.

  67. 67.

    Mike in NC

    The real question remains, will Trump get us involved in a pointless war with North Korea, or Syria, or both at the same time?

  69. 69.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman: I always thought they were probes, if there was a weakling in office (Bush, Trump) they’d get bolder and see if they could get away with more.

    Otherwise it was just a lot of talking and bluffing against Clinton & Obama. Weirdly, NK seemed to perversely respect strength, provided we didn’t talk down to them (as they saw it).

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    @TenguPhule:

    Weirdly, NK seemed to perversely respect strength, provided we didn’t talk down to them (as they saw it).

    I don’t think there’s anything perverse about respecting strength. The key, IMO, is that they’re smart enough to tell the difference between strength and bluster. If only American voters were that discerning.

  73. 73.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: I think the probing the new guy is always a good explanation. Especially when you have probing and a new guy.

  79. 79.

    hovercraft

    @Mike J:

    Did Frum reply? He’s everybody’s favorite sane conservative.

    No Jennifer Rubin is the new favorite. She’s all hate with none of the whining that Obama, Pelosi and Reid were so mean to republicans that the GOP had no choice but to lose their minds.

  83. 83.

    Tokyokie

    @Lizzy L: Not Adam, obviously, but the PRK is basically dependent on the PRC, and by acting up right before Xi’s visit, it gives its patron more cards to play.

    It sort of reminds me of when I worked offshore during the summers while I was an undergraduate. In the rec room, a never-ending game of Bourré was played. I tried watching to figure out the rules, and decided that “Bourré” was Cajun for “Coonasses take dumb Texicans’ money.” And Trump is the dumbest Texican of them all in this situation.

  84. 84.

    Mike J

    @TenguPhule:

    I’m good with offering NK some tribute. Either Mrs. Trump can be delivered to Kim Jong, no questions asked.

    Tillerson DID say all options are on the table, so maybe they’re considering this.

  89. 89.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Most of the dearth of expertise is into the social, cultural, political, ideological, religious, economic, and strategic decision-making that exists within both the Kim government and North Korea as a whole. I linked to the folks at the Center for Non-proliferation Studies. They’re great on the technical side of the missile tests. That’s very important. But it isn’t going to provide the context to Commander I Corps when he’s trying to figure out who his Soldiers are going to encounter once they proceed north of the DMZ or how they’re going to react and respond: militarily, socially, etc.

    Extreme layman/non-expert that I am…I sincerely can’t see a turn of events that leads to American soldiers proceeding into North Korea. I just can’t picture it. No turn of events seems to get us there. If provocations and chest-thumping exercises turn into casualties and escalate enough, if North Korea is convinced we’re about to invade or nuke them, then North Korea flattens Seoul in a heartbeat. And then we are either carpet bombing the entire DPRK or dropping a couple nukes to get them to knock it off (and in either circumstance, I sure as hell hope China is on board).

    Just can’t see American troops making a push up the peninsula without sustaining horrendous casualties AND (assuming we ‘win’) then sustaining additional horrendous casualties while occupying North Korea for any length of time. It’s not to say that my layman’s take on this is correct – we do need the expertise as you’ve been saying. But it just seems like other events would overtake that possibility of American troops crossing the DMZ and/or occupying North Korea.

  90. 90.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    discernible pattern

    Yes, several analysts pointed out that need for attention and importance at the time that W bobbled the relationship.
    I wish I’d saved cites, but did not.

  91. 91.

    mai naem mobile

    I can’t fucking believe the statement from the SOS. WTF? And fucking Tillerson was supposed to be the normal one. Jeezus fucking christ. A 36 year old frat boy who probably didn’t know where Pyongyang was till last month. I am hiding under the covers again.

  92. 92.

    jmw

    Stupid question but what capacities does NK have to reach Japan? I know Seoul is well sited from the DMZ…

  93. 93.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Given the youth and spoiled brat air around Kim Jong-un, it’s not a wildly speculative notion that he’s attention seeking. Certainly he’s of the view that having nukes means we have to respect his authoritah.

  94. 94.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jmw: Medium range ballistic missiles, which is why test firings into the Sea of Japan are so worrisome.

  96. 96.

    raven

    @Jeffro: We only have 29,000 troops there now. There are 25 million NK’s and 50 million South Koreans. We’ve been nothing but a trip wire for more than a half a century. Actually my young ass was sitting about a mile south of the Z 50 years ago tonight.

  97. 97.

    Lizzy L

    @Tokyokie: Without a doubt, except that he’s capable of ending the game by turning over the table and shooting all the participants. He’s easily manipulated, but he is also a vengeful and nasty man with access to nukes. But really I should relax, since fundamentally, nothing’s changed.

  98. 98.

    jmw

    @Villago Delenda Est: Right. My understanding was that the continued tests are because of reliability problems. Still it’s not much consolation to the families that get hit by the 40% (WAG) that get through.

  99. 99.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jmw: Just the missiles they’re trying to develop. My understanding from the news reporting is they want to be able to reach the US bases in Japan as a potential first strike or something.

  101. 101.

    hovercraft

    @TenguPhule:

    Rubin might just be another Cole in the making, provided she doesn’t backslide.

    I remember reading or seeing somewhere that she used to be one of us, but switched to the GOP after 9/11

  104. 104.

    TenguPhule

    @Jeffro:

    And then we are either carpet bombing the entire DPRK or dropping a couple nukes to get them to knock it off (and in either circumstance, I sure as hell hope China is on board).

    They wouldn’t. They’d be shooting at us under either scenario and be fully justified in it due to their defense treaty with NK. Also, they wouldn’t appreciate the fallout.

  107. 107.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jmw: Initially they’re going to be firing from hardened positions, hard to say without recent intel on those sites how long they can sustain a barrage to Seoul. Surely, as you note, the ROKs are ready to counterbattery their asses to smithereenies if they can get past whatever hardening is in place. They may have an entire network of preregistered hardened positions to move to rapidly to avoid counterbattery.

  108. 108.

    Wag

    We need to send Dennis Rodman to NK ASAP. let’s turn this into a true reality TV show.

  109. 109.

    TenguPhule

    @Roger Moore: Some of them are obviously needed as blood sacrifices to Iraq and Afghanistan. Can’t let one nation have all of the fun.

  111. 111.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jmw: One nuke getting through will ruin your day. I can’t imagine the NKs have some sort of huge arsenal of ready to go warheads, though, which limits their options and with delivery means reliability problems make things even more dicey.

  113. 113.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jmw: I assume they know where the counter battery is likely to be and will give priority to it. OTOH, we assumed (25-30 years ago) that we would get 2 maybe 3 volleys from a firing point before counter battery would locate us.

    @Major Major Major Major: That too.

  115. 115.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    It’s so much easier when you don’t have to worry about information or expertise or negotiating tactics, and the President just does whatever he’s been bribed to do.

    Is this when the kids say “SHOTS FIRED!”?

  117. 117.

    Wag

    And it sounds to me from reading the State Department response to this fiasco the Tillerson is washing his hands of trump’s actions.

  118. 118.

    raven

    @Omnes Omnibus: They knew the names of the guys in the bunkers and would broadest them through those big ass speakers. Maybe security is better now.

  119. 119.

    Tokyokie

    @Jeffro: The major U.S. military installation in the ROK is Yongsan Garrison in Seoul. If Seoul is nuked, so are thousands of GIs. But you’re assuming that all the PRK will do is pepper the South with a few nukes. Most of the PRK’s military assets are stationed close to the DMZ, and they are thought to have constructed a network of tunnels under the DMZ. Coincidental with the firing of ICBMs at the ROK, the PRK would almost certainly send its soldiers across the DMZ. The United States has a series of camps along the DMZ, and their combined troop strength is insufficient to repel an all-out invasion by the North. The idea is that the U.S. troops serve as a trip-wire, so that the PRK is aware that a ground invasion of the South will necessarily mean the involvement of the U.S. military. But if they’re willing to nuke Seoul, they will have already taken action that will result in a U.S. declaration of war. What more would they have to lose by engaging U.S. ground troops?

  120. 120.

    Jeffro

    @raven:

    We only have 29,000 troops there now. There are 25 million NK’s and 50 million South Koreans. We’ve been nothing but a trip wire for more than a half a century. Actually my young ass was sitting about a mile south of the Z 50 years ago tonight.

    And we’re glad you’re back here, now. =)

    I understand the ‘trip wire’ concept – it’s not like those 29,000 troops are there to even slow down the North Koreans, much less take the fight into their country. I guess that’s part of why I’m not seeing us mass additional troops in South Korea, or try some large air- or sea-borne invasion of the DPRK. It just doesn’t make sense. They’re nuts and they have a crazy amount of artillery aimed at Seoul and if things escalate enough that they start using it, then it won’t be a quarter million Americans surging north to get them to stop. It’ll be our air power, possibly including nukes, that is brought to bear.

    I think we should just offer the Kim family and their 1,000 closest retainers a nice, relaxing retreat somewhere in the Caribbean where they can live like kings and gorge themselves all day. Hell, let’s buy one of Carnival’s biggest ships and keep it fully stocked (including the minibars in the cabins). Buy them out and gently go in to begin the long task of bringing their people back into the world. Amirite China? Japan? Wouldn’t that be worth a little cheddar, before North Korea decides to see if they really *can* put one of their baby nukes on top of one of their baby ICBMs…?

  121. 121.

    TenguPhule

    @Villago Delenda Est: Last estimate I heard was 6-8 probable fission bombs. But given their unreliable delivery systems….Seoul still is in bigger danger then Tokyo there.

    But a near miss by a nuke is still a bad thing.

  122. 122.

    TenguPhule

    @Jeffro:

    It’ll be our air power, possibly including nukes, that is brought to bear.

    And run slam into Chinese air defenses and counter attacks. Again, not a good thing.

  128. 128.

    Jeffro

    @Tokyokie:

    if [the DPRK is] willing to nuke Seoul, they will have already taken action that will result in a U.S. declaration of war. What more would they have to lose by engaging U.S. ground troops?

    I think I was saying something along these lines? They don’t have much to lose as it is. Well, the Kims and their very top people have a lot to lose…everyone else, not so much.

  131. 131.

    Mike in NC

    Did anybody even think to explain to the unstable imbecile Trump that North Korea has been pulling this kind of shit for more than 60 years?

  132. 132.

    Kay

    The stuff coming out about FOX is incredible. It’s an absolute sewer:

    David Folkenflik‏Verified account @davidfolkenflik 11h11 hours ago
    More
    NEWS: That third, new plaintiff in racial discrimination case against Fox News offers list of horrors against fired controller in court docs

    2/Allegations include vile epithets agst African Americans & ppl of Indian descent; claims Fox exec kicked staffer in the rear in hallway

    They’re horrors- just awful, nasty people.

  133. 133.

    raven

    All this is a pretty good argument for a pre-emptive 20 megaton airburst over Pyongyang.

  137. 137.

    Tokyokie

    @raven: I was aware that the U.S. has been trying to downgrade the status of Yongsan, in large part because it takes up a buttload of valuable Seoul real estate and the Koreans would like to put it to better use. But it’s been awhile since I worked for Pacific Stars & Stripes. Still, if Seoul is nuked, a lot of American personnel dies. Although a PRK missile aimed at Seoul might be nearly as likely to hit Busan.

  138. 138.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Corner Stone:
    Frum is an old-fashioned Republican. He’s a mean-spirited asshole who wants to make things worse for minorities and the poor, while patting himself on the back about how responsible he is. He’s just not insane, and watching his party go from that to trying to blow up the world upsets him.

    @TenguPhule:
    And like I said, since Trump will do whatever China pays him to do, I don’t think a war is likely.

  140. 140.

    Adam L Silverman

    @clay: Laney. He left well before you got there. He was made an ambassador in 93 shortly after the inauguration. I graduated in 92. I was one of the Bobby Jones Scholars.

  143. 143.

    clay

    @mainmata:

    Methodists have archbishops? (I grew up Catholic so this is a real revelation.)

    The United Methodist Church, which is to say, the mainline Methodist church in America that oversees Emory Univesity, has Bishops but does not have any Archbishops.

  145. 145.

    Another Scott

    @Frankensteinbeck: That’s my opinion as well.

    “Everything is on the table!!!1ONE”

    Just shouting that isn’t going to scare Kim or anyone else. They know it’s an empty threat.

    The US military isn’t going to attack NK without SK and Japan being given a heads-up (so that they can prepare defensive measures and get retaliatory forces prepared if they need to act to counter an attack). And they’re not going to suddenly accept a pre-emptive attack over a piddling little missile that flew 40 miles when there are so many other ways of attacking the NK problem.

    I found this Vanity Fair piece on Kim from 2015 to be quite interesting.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  149. 149.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    And this deficit of knowledge is combined with a new Administration that is not properly or fully staffed painfully inept and not even close to being up to the task at hand.

    That’s what you really meant, no?

  150. 150.

    clay

    @raven: The Dalai Lama was the speaker at my graduation! (Also, Archbishop Desmond Tutu taught a lecture course that I took when I was in theology school.)

  153. 153.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Another Scott:

    The US military isn’t going to attack NK without SK and Japan being given a heads-up…

    That sounds all nice and good but how can you be sure what President Bannon and Vice President Trump will do?

  156. 156.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: I arrived in fall of 1994, right when the next president William Chase arrived. (There was an interim president for a year.). So it wasn’t too far off. The school paper (which I worked on) would occasionally run stories about Laney’s ambassadorship. They didn’t take the “dumb as a post” view for some reason.

  157. 157.

    Adam L Silverman

    @clay: I had Gorbachev. Instead of being smart and moving the whole thing to the Omni, they limited everyone to four tickets. So people who were the first to ever graduate college had to limit their family members attendance. Then they ramped the security up to about 42 on a scale of 10. And Gorbachev doesn’t, or at the time didn’t, do English. So he’d start a sentence and halfway through the translator would kick in and they’d be talking over each other. After about 3 minutes or so they just turned Gorbachev’s mic off. He might as well have just mailed his remarks in and had them read. All of this was that idiot Laney’s doing. He was trying to woo Gorbachev to an endowed chair at Emory College and a named, distinguished senior fellowship at the Carter Center. Gorbachev took the money for the commencement address and, about a week later, informed the world with a press release he was opening his own think tank.

  158. 158.

    Tokyokie

    @raven: Cool! But I don’t think their archives are quite what they were when I was there, because I heard they reduced the size of the library. But one of our reporters did give Al Gore his clip file when he visited Yokota AB while he was veep. And, I hasten to add, the reporter said he was genuinely touched by the gesture.

  159. 159.

    Adam L Silverman

    @raven: I really don’t have a place for that either in my house or in my yard right now. But thanks!

  160. 160.

    clay

    @raven: Was she singing? I don’t remember her coming. Shame, though I wouldn’t have appreciated her at the time.

    Huh. I just did a google search for “Patti Smith Emory” and I discovered that Peter Buck of R.E.M. dropped out of Emory. I never knew he attended.

  161. 161.

    Adam L Silverman

    @clay: It is a special place, regardless of how dumb the university president was when I was there. I spent the first two years at Oxford College getting the full, classic liberal arts core. Followed by my major at Emory College. I have very fond memories of the place.

  165. 165.

    Tokyokie

    @Adam L Silverman: I have a niece who’s attending Emory (who recently switched her major from astrophysics to classics; a lot of overlap there). I keep asking her to get me a T-shirt with the school’s mascot, the Boards. Maybe one day that joke will get a laugh.

  168. 168.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: The Dalai Lama spoke English fine, but it was thickly accented. He may as well have had a translator. It took place on the quad, which meant that a couple thousand kids were sitting in the May Atlanta sun dressed in black robes. The novelty of hearing the Dalai Lama quickly wore off and we just wanted him to wrap it up.

    President Clinton came by during my freshman year to give a speech to the student body. I got to shake his hand afterwards. Pretty cool.

  170. 170.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Tokyokie: I may have a Swoop the Chicken (what we used to call the Eagle mascot) t-shirt in a box somewhere I can send you.

  171. 171.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Davis X. Machina: Aye, but that presupposes they’re not just operating ala Donald, that is, pulling shit out of their ass. Also, too, they need to have a recall ability on a cargo ship bearing a nuke. Then there’s the issue of the warhead itself being reliable…I don’t have a good feel for that.

  174. 174.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @clay: @Adam L Silverman: The Dalai Lama spoke English fine, but it was thickly accented

    I can confirm. I caddied for him once.

  175. 175.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @TenguPhule: I’m kinda curious as to how close this last shot came to where they were aiming. My guess is, not very. And that’s an MRBM that can’t reach anywhere significant except Japan & the ROK. IMHO a full-scale invasion of the South is more likely than a nuke–even a nutjob like Kim must realize that the instant he lobs a nuke anywhere, it’s open season on him & the rest of his whackjob army. A non-WMD assault he’d have a better chance of surviving or even getting away with.

  178. 178.

    mike in dc

    There’s also around 150 thousand American citizens in South Korea, presumably most of them around Seoul. The global market impact of the devastation of Seoul and possibly the nuking of a major Japanese city would be immense.
    When Tillerson says “all options are on the table”, that verbiage generally includes the use of nukes.

  181. 181.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: My dad went to Oxford before Emory. He later served on the Board, perhaps when you were there!

    I know all about Indigo Girls, of course. In fact, I got to interview Emily Saliers for the school paper. (And her father was my professor at theology school.). I just assumed all of the R.E.M. guys went to UGA.

    I love Emory. I visited it last year when we went to Atlanta for my 40th birthday. Saw some old friends. Saw Springsteen at the Omni. I’m trying to subtly push my daughters to consider Emory so we can go visit them.

  184. 184.

    Citizen Alan

    @hovercraft:

    Not my favorite she’s not. I will never forgive Jennifer Rubin for prematurely blaming the Anders Brevik mass murders on Islamic terrorists before the bodies of those children were even cold. Vile bitch.

  185. 185.

    prob50

    @Baud:

    People would be livid if their favorite sports team were coached by someone this out of their depth.

    Boy and shit howdy, ain’t that the truth?

  186. 186.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: This was always the “um…er…ooops” factor when I was in Europe. How bad a situation do we have in Fulda? Do we nuke that Red Army spearhead on the way to Frankfurt?

    Scary shit.

  189. 189.

    efgoldman

    @TenguPhule:

    Weirdly, NK seemed to perversely respect strength, provided we didn’t talk down to them

    I don’t think that’s weird or perverse at all. It’s very much in human nature.

  191. 191.

    GregB

    Trump is sitting in his silk jammies and making his stern Churchill face in the mirror and plotting a 4:00 am tweet-storm mocking Kim Jong Un.

  192. 192.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Villago Delenda Est: I was on the Hof crossing. Trip wire, baby. Every exercise ended with a tactical nuke and a posthumous BSM and PH being given to my mom and dad. Golly, I hope it gets a V.

  193. 193.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Just to clarify, the US has never ruled out first use of nukes. It’s strongly implied that we won’t do so, but there are situations (see Europe prior to the fall of The Wall and the USSR) where we reserved the right to do so, implying that a bad enough tactical situation might call for popping a nuke or two.

    The situation in Korea probably can’t get that dire. The ROK has plenty of Abrams and artillery and lots and lots of redoubts between the DMZ and Seoul. A conventional attack is going to be bloody and not as decisive as many might think, even taking the proximity of Seoul to the DMZ into account.

  196. 196.

    GregB

    @GrandJury:

    When I did college security a co-worker who was a sergeant-major in the Army and had been stationed in South Korea said North Korea was the only potential flashpoint that gave him nightmares due to the fanatacism of the NK miitary.

    May cool heads keep Trump from acting like a reality show dick-wad.

  198. 198.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: When I was in the Signal Battalion, my GDP area was just south of Wildflecken. When I was with the infantry, we were north of the Wasserkuppe.

  207. 207.

    Another Scott

    @Thru the Looking Glass…: I don’t know what they’ll do, but I do know what they won’t do.

    They won’t attack NK without preparations. Preparations take time. Preparations are hard to hide. Preparations require bases in the area. If SK and Japan aren’t on-board, they’re not going to allow their facilities to be used to support it.

    Look at the buildup for the Gulf War. Look at Turkey forbidding their bases to be used for the Iraq invasion. Look at how long it took to start hostilities in Afghanistan (just short of a month).

    Trump’s people think that making LOUD NOISES is the way to get adversaries to do what we want. They’re incompetents and they’re going to find that they’re not going to get Kim to change his behavior with such threats.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  208. 208.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    even a nutjob like Kim must realize that the instant he lobs a nuke anywhere, it’s open season on him & the rest of his whackjob army.

    A nutjob like Kim does not realize the same things you do.

    And yes, if he tried to nuke anyone, or mount any kind of offensive, there would be a North Korean stir-fry special served up right quick. No one will miss him.

  210. 210.

    efgoldman

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    That sounds all nice and good but how can you be sure what President Bannon and Vice President Trump will do?

    We are in a situation where the two countries (US and NK) are run by four-year old toddlers who are both unpredictable (where and how will each go off) and totally predictable (DID NOT! DID TOO!!). Kim may or may not have a strategery, other than pushing Amber Asswipe as far and as hard as he can. Everything we know about Tamarind Tyrant tells us he has no impulse control; so far it’s just shown itself in speech and twitlering, but who knows….

  212. 212.

    debbie

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Not to get between you and your newfound buddy ?, but Gerson’s Wiki page has this:

    Gerson is credited with coining such phrases as “the soft bigotry of low expectations” and “the armies of compassion”.[17] His noteworthy phrases for Bush are said to include “Axis of Evil,” a phrase adapted from “axis of hatred,” itself suggested by fellow speechwriter David Frum but deemed too mild.[18]

    They both suck, if you ask me.

  213. 213.

    TriassicSands

    But, but, but isn’t Kim Jong Un terrified of super tough guy Donald “Mad Hog” Trump?

    I would have thought by now — All Options Are on the Table” Tillerson would have gotten through to Kim with the message that “Mad Hog”‘ is coming for Kim, whose days are numbered. There’s a nuke with Kim’s name on it. Small problem — no one has told Mad Hog how close N, Korea is to S. Korea or what radioactive fallout is — Trump can only absorb so much with his 90-second attention span and the need to be ready with an outraged Tweet at a moment’s notice.

    I’d give a lot to know who has a more detailed and realistic understanding of the world — Trump or Kim. My money’s on Kim.

  214. 214.

    Cacti

    Friend and foe, the rest of the world sees Trump as an impotent blowhard.

    He’s neither loved, feared, nor respected.

  215. 215.

    Corner Stone

    @BruceFromOhio: Why would I chase two rabbis? I can gather more of them than I want by loudly proclaiming in the streets, “Oh, and the best deli!”
    Oy, vey.

  216. 216.

    efgoldman

    @mike in dc:

    When Tillerson says “all options are on the table”, that verbiage generally includes the use of nukes.

    There’s no petroleum on the peninsula to contaminate, right?

  217. 217.

    Mike J

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Medium range ballistic missiles, which is why test firings into the Sea of Japan are so worrisome.

    And did anybody see the story about the Houthis in Yemen using drones against air defenses? good way to get a missile in, make the enemy blow their wad against something that costs a few thousand bucks to build.

  218. 218.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mike J: This is why all the talk of “missile defense” is such bullshit. There are a gazillion low tech/low cost counters that can confuse the hell out of the radars that the “missile defense” must have to identify a target. If you’re shooting at chaff, it’s easy for a warhead to sneak past you and cause hurt on the ground. They couldn’t even cheat the tests right to get “missile defense” to work.

    In Korea, unless something goes outrageously wrong with a conventional defense, it’s unlikely we’d pop a nuke over Seoul…just too much collateral damage there. Also there’s the NKs wanting to take Seoul relatively intact. They’re not going to want to nuke it either. Busan is another matter…during the Korean War, Busan never fell to the NKs. That makes Busan a target. Then there’s always the desire to take out US bases in Japan, and to inflict pain on the Japanese because hey, no one has forgotten the colonial period.

  219. 219.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    @Adam L Silverman: LOL, I meant that in general. Graduated from Korean at DLI, 97E school. Was discharged for coming out as trans shortly thereafter a decade ago.

  221. 221.

    Mike J

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Then there’s always the desire to take out US bases in Japan,

    That’s rational target selection in that it slows down reinforcements and gets rid of a USMC air base. Bad news for everyone but the bad guys.

  222. 222.

    Mike J

    Is anybody doing a pool for when Jacobin runs their “North Korea is just misunderstood and the US has no moral standing anyway” article?

  226. 226.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: I really hate their co-opting the name “Jacobin.” I have a lot of sympathy for the original Jacobins. Danton was really my guy. I don’t like them fucking with it.

  227. 227.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Their North Korea article from 2016 seems to have been about how North Koreans were hipsters or something. I didn’t get very far…

  228. 228.

    Alan Barney

    Kim Jong Un is on a mission from God. He is to unite North and South Korea under his rule. This will fulfill his grandfather’s dream and history. He will attack Japan and US assets in the region. He will attack Seoul, South Korea, (14 million people) if not with nukes, conventional artillery and missiles. Un, “The Flounder” ( He lets me call him that.) has tons of VX nerve agent and is apparently unafraid to use it. This is very serious. China will support North Korea, to what end?

  229. 229.

    clay

    Oh, hey, after all of the tangents and conversation, I forgot that I had a question about the original post:

    A senior White House official issued a dire warning to reporters Tuesday on the state of North Korea’s nuclear program, declaring “the clock has now run out and all options are on the table.”

    “The clock has now run out, and all options are on the table,” the official said, pointing to the failure of successive administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear program.
    The senior White House official who issued Tuesday’s ominous missive also said North Korea is a “matter of urgent interest for the President and the administration as a whole” and emphasized that “all options are on the table.”

    I can’t really figure out why this report won’t identify who the WH official is. It doesn’t seem like a particularly controversial statement, or one that could get the official in trouble. Why the heck is he anonymous?

  231. 231.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Tokyokie:

    Speak loudly and carry no stick at all step on your dick.

    More in keeping w/ the moment, no?

    Also means Trump has one hell of a short pair of legs…

  232. 232.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: I know modern journalism has a lot of failings. (Like, a LOT.) But one of them is that they make shit anonymous that often has no real reason to be. Let’s get this all out in the open. Or, at the very least, provide a reason why it’s anonymous.

    I sent you that e-mail, by the way.

  233. 233.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @efgoldman: One of the really impressive things about Bannon and Trump’s act is the fact that you never see Bannon’s lips moving when Trump speaks… I especially like it when Bannon drinks water while Trump is talking…

    Have I mentioned recently how much I loathe and despise these people?

  236. 236.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Thru the Looking Glass…: While the estimates are that they have between 12 and 20 warheads, give or take, it is unclear if they are able to actually mate the warhead to a missile and have it function. Their medium and long range missiles are still not functioning they way they intend them to, as evidenced by tonight’s 40 mile or so flight. Not sure about the short range ones.

  237. 237.

    danielx

    The spousal unit was watching the news this evening and asking me how serious this is, while viewing footage of readiness exercises and the like. My response was roughly like this – the last time the US Army got its ass handed to it, to the point of losing battalions, regiments and a (2nd Infantry) division was in Korea. The North Koreans are just as nuts now, if not more so, than they were then. The Korean DMZ is one of the most dangerous places on earth and the North Koreans have a ton of artillery aimed at Seoul, which has a population of ten million. Oh yeah, the North Koreans have at least a few nuclear weapons. So yeah, it’s pretty serious.

  239. 239.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s what kind of worries me… the short stuff…

    Hell… they could practically put a warhead in a pick up truck and drive it to S Korea, no?

  241. 241.

    opiejeanne

    @Adam L Silverman: Reverend John S. Grauel was not an archbishop.The UMC, and I do think he was a member of that branch, does not have a rank above bishop; I can’t find that he was a bishop but I wouldn’t doubt that he was, given his activities. Bishops are elevated by a vote of a Jurisdictional Conferences and assigned to a particular area, but the Council of Bishops is our highest level of authority.

    If you’re talking about the Wesleyan Methodists, God knows how they do things.

    Your terrible college president was probably hoping to become a bishop.

  242. 242.

    ArchTeryx

    @Omnes Omnibus: Then it’s Katie Bar the Door, and it will inevitably degenerate into a nukefest. Threads, here we come!

    (Apropo of nothing, one of the few ass-pulls in the otherwise superb military potboiler Red Storm Rising was the deliberate avoidance of chemical and nuclear weapons. It was pointed out by one character that the chemical weapons of the time were in some ways worse then tactical nukes; they were akin to neutron bombs that would completely sterilize large parts of Germany for a very long time and effectively destroy them as a people. When fictional characters are smarter then the real people in charge, things start to get too real for comfort).

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