Pyongyang displays military hardware, including apparently new intercontinental ballistic missile
The U.S. believes North Korea’s first five tests have been plutonium bombs. But if uranium is used in the next test, it could suggest the North has a much larger arsenal than initially believed. Current estimates are that the country has between 20 and 40 atomic weapons.
.. North Korea has also said it’s seeking to develop hydrogen bombs
.. The North also paraded two missile canisters that hadn’t been seen before and which appeared to be able to accommodate larger missiles than the North has ever displayed publicly. While the canisters may not contain missiles, experts said the display indicated the North’s intentions to build larger ICBMs.
.. “A lot of this may be intimidation or bluffing, but it’s potentially a sign of things to come,”
.. North Korea also paraded a submarine-launched ballistic missile
.. The march came a day after Beijing urged the U.S. and North Korea to tone down their rhetoric, saying no one would win if there was a war.
Sean Spicer is very Sorry about his Holocaust Comments
Spicer gets in the most trouble when he follows his boss’s thinking most closely—and things just get worse when he tries to pull in history, or facts, to justify the route that Trump has taken him on.
.. Indeed, before Spicer began comparing Assad to Hitler, it sounded as if he might be coming dangerously close to comparing footage of sarin-gas-attack victims to the cell-phone video, at which he had earlier expressed horror, of a passenger being removed from a United flight.
.. Then someone asked why Spicer thought any of that would lead Vladimir Putin to abandon Syria, Russia’s longtime ally, and that’s when Spicer’s difficulties really escalated. Looking for clarity, he turned to Hitler.
.. For Spicer to revert, as a default, to such terms in explaining why Assad is worse than Hitler suggests that he—and, it is a safe guess, others in the White House—are either not registering the implications of what their boss is saying or are doing so all too well.
.. President Trump has given an important job to a person not competent to carry it out. This is not a problem confined to Spicer; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has also been entrusted with crucial tasks far beyond his experience. They are all playing with fire. Then again, in the Trump Administration, what would competent communications looks like?
.. President Trump has given an important job to a person not competent to carry it out. This is not a problem confined to Spicer; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has also been entrusted with crucial tasks far beyond his experience. They are all playing with fire. Then again, in the Trump Administration, what would competent communications looks like?
.. Trump had been tweeting belligerently, and the South Korean government had had to reassure its citizens that war wasn’t imminent. Spicer made a serious face. “We have a shared interest with China of making sure that we don’t have a nuclear North Korea,” he said.
“We do have a nuclear North Korea,” Van Susteren interrupted.
“No . . .”
“I mean, we do,” Van Susteren said, and began reeling off facts about that nation’s arsenal.
“They have, they have short- and medium-term miss—again, I’m not going to get into their nuclear capability,” Spicer said. Wasn’t that just what he’d done?
Creeping Toward Crisis
“I don’t show my hand” isn’t a strategy to conceal a plan as much as one to conceal the absence of a plan.
.. Our commander in chief is not in full command of his emotions or facts or geopolitics.
.. The world is watching, and the world is full of dangerous men who see killing as a means of maintaining and exerting power. They see in Trump a novice and know-nothing, and they will surely test his resolve.
.. Trump has exposed himself to the world as an imbecile and burned through American credibility with his incessant lying. Even many of our allies seem confused and worried about where we stand and how we plan to proceed.
Trump is full of pride, obsessed with strongman personas, and absent of historical and geopolitical perspective. This is the worst possible situation. The man who could bring us into military engagement is woefully deficient in intellectual engagement.
.. Just days after the Trump administration shockingly signaled a softer stance on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Assad — possibly emboldened by America’s reversed course — unleashed an atrocious chemical attack on his own people, killing dozens.
President Trump’s Most Important Meeting
Most experts believe that the North will not abandon its nuclear program unless the leadership at the top changes. China opposes this because it fears a surge of refugees into its territory and wants to keep North Korea as a buffer against a potentially unified Korean Peninsula dominated by the American military.
The United States and China may have a long-shot chance at an achievable solution if they agree to increase sanctions on North Korea and pursue more modest goals — halting North Korean missile tests and curbing the production of additional nuclear weapons — but there has been no serious sign of interest from the Trump administration.
.. The risk in this meeting is that Mr. Trump knows little about diplomacy with China and does not have a team of China experts in place. He has already had to correct one major error; after calling into question America’s longstanding one-China policy
.. The meeting is also a test for Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, who, while also lacking foreign policy and government experience, has played a dominant role as the primary interlocutor with the Chinese, thus eclipsing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.