And beginning next month with the Winter Olympics in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang, the Pentagon plans to send more Special Operations troops to the Korean Peninsula, an initial step toward what some officials said ultimately could be the formation of a Korea-based task force similar to the types that are fighting in Iraq and Syria.
.. President Trump’s own words have left senior military leaders and rank-and-file troops convinced that they need to accelerate their contingency planning.
.. In perhaps the most incendiary exchange, in a September speech at the United Nations, Mr. Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if it threatened the United States, and derided the rogue nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, as “Rocket Man.” In response, Mr. Kim said he would deploy the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the United States, and described Mr. Trump as a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”
.. on Jan. 2, Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., warned the 200 civilians and service members in the audience that more Special Forces personnel might have to shift to the Korea theater from the Middle East in May or June, if tensions escalate on the peninsula.
.. Military officials said General Milley has cited the ill-fated
- Battle of the Kasserine Pass during World War II, when unprepared American troops were outfoxed and then pummeled by the forces of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel of Germany. General Milley has also recently mentioned
- Task Force Smith, the poorly equipped, understrength unit that was mauled by North Korean troops in 1950 during the Korean War.
.. fretted about a loss of what he has called muscle memory: how to fight a large land war, including one in which an established adversary is able to bring sophisticated air defenses, tanks, infantry, naval power and even cyberweapons into battle.
.. There have been no travel warnings advising Americans to stay away from South Korea or Japan, and no advisories warning American businesses to be cautious.
.. It is unlikely that the Pentagon would launch military action on the Korean Peninsula without first warning Americans and others there, military officials said — unless the Trump administration believes that the United States could conduct a one-time airstrike on North Korea that would not bring any retaliation from Pyongyang to nearby Seoul.
.. Some officials in the White House have argued that such a targeted, limited strike could be launched with minimal, if any, blowback against South Korea — a premise that Mr. Mattis views with skepticism,
.. But for Mr. Mattis, the planning serves to placate Mr. Trump.
.. protects Mr. Mattis from suggestions that he is out of step with Mr. Trump.
.. The maneuvers were aimed at forcing an enemy to fight on different fronts early in combat.
.. Officials said maneuvers practiced in the exercise, called Panther Blade, could be used anywhere, not just on the Korean Peninsula.
.. Another exercise, called Bronze Ram
.. Air Force B-1 bombers flying from Guam have been seen regularly over the Korean Peninsula
.. B-52 bombers based in Louisiana are expected to join the B-1s stationed on Guam later this month
.. three B-2 bombers and their crews had arrived in Guam from their base in Missouri.
.. unlike the very public buildup of forces in the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the 2003 Iraq war .. the Pentagon is seeking to avoid making public all its preparations for fear of inadvertently provoking a response by Mr. Kim
.. “I’ll also add that right now, the Defense Department is in support of Secretary of State Tillerson, who’s got a campaign to be the lead with North Korea in a diplomatic endeavor,” General Jamieson said.
Trump Discovers the Dangers of Governing at Daredevil Speed
Now the city is leaving its bruising mark on him, with the same astonishing swiftness that has been a hallmark of his lightning-strike political career.
.. all meant to disrupt American politics as usual.
.. Ten days of shocks, kicking off with Mr. Trump’s surprise ouster of James B. Comey .. have left the West Wing reeling.
.. dread of “5 o’clock,” marking the arrival of the daily dump of damaging leaks or fresh reports of staff infighting.
.. It is as if some unseen adversary has copied Mr. Trump’s own velocity and ferocity in an attempt to destroy him
.. Sources are shuttling all kinds of information about Mr. Trump to reporters at a pace the White House cannot match.
.. “Washington feels like a kiddie soccer game — tons of frenzy but no strategy,” said Senator Ben Sasse
.. members of Mr. Trump’s team are hoping to slow the tempo set by the president and his hard-charging chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.
They have suggested that he calm down, spend less time on Twitter, and avoid making decisions too quickly.
.. Brian Ott, a Texas Tech professor who has analyzed Mr. Trump’s use of social media, said: “The velocity at which this is happening right now is absolutely unprecedented. News is breaking so fast the stories are stepping on each other.”
Opinions The Democrats’ well-deserved WikiLeaks blowback
Over at the CIA and the National Security Agency headquarters, they must be really enjoying watching Democrats in Philadelphia squirm over WikiLeaks’s exposure of tens of thousands of internal Democratic Party emails. There’s a word for what is happening in the intelligence community:
Blowback.
Throughout the entirety of the Obama administration, nothing was done as WikiLeaks damaged our national security with its serial leaks of highly classified intelligence documents.
.. When in 2010 WikiLeaks released more than 76,000 secret intelligence documents — exposing “the identities of at least 100 Afghans who were informing on the Taliban, including the names of their villages, family members, the Taliban commanders on whom they were informing, and even GPS coordinates where they could be found,” as I wrote in The Post — nothing was done.
.. Instead of targeting the CIA or the NSA, WikiLeaks has gone after an organization Democrats actually care about — the Democratic National Committee.
Key Iraqi City Falls to ISIS as Last of Security Forces Flee
According to officials, Mr. Jones told the Anbar delegation that the United States would continue its air campaign, provided that the militias were under the command of Mr. Abadi, and not Iranian advisers
.. Another soldier who had been stationed at the Anbar Operations Command headquarters said the forces left behind a huge cache of heavy weapons that had recently been sent by Baghdad, including rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. The weapons had been supplied by both the United States and Russia.
“ISIS is gaining more weapons, and the battle will be harder in the future,” said the soldier, who declined to give his name because he feared for his life.