Bolton: Time running out to deal with North Korea threat

Amb. John Bolton, Fox News contributor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says the rogue nation is getting closer to having the U.S. over a barrel.

The threat of nuclear war posed by North Korea has grown to an “unprecedented” level amid escalating tensions with the rogue regime and now requires the U.S., Japan and South Korea to demonstrate “different responses” to the threat, a Japanese official said Monday.

Speaking with the U.S. and South Korean counterparts at a meeting of Asian defense chiefs in the Philippines, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said “(The) threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level,” according to a Reuters report. “Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet with that level of threat.”

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said that threats from North Korea have grown to an “unprecedented” level.  (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had similar remarks, noting that North Korea’s ongoing intimidations “threaten regional and global security.”

“North Korea’s provocative behavior is becoming worse and worse,” South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo added.

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The comments among defense chiefs follows a report that North Korea’s biological weapons program could kill tens of thousands of people and “create panic and paralyze societies.”

According to Reuters, the defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), highlighted the “need to maintain peace and stability in the region” and called “for the exercise of self-restraint and the resumption of dialogue to de-escalate tensions in the Korean peninsula.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called President Donald Trump a “lunatic” on Sunday for taking the U.S. and its “poor puppet forces” straight “into ruin.”

Kim Jong Un on Sunday called President Trump a “lunatic” for taking the U.S. straight “into ruin.”  (KCNA via REUTERS)

The president last week said he would “certainly take a look” at visiting the DMZ, or demilitarized zone, after he was invited to tour U.S. Army installation Camp Humphreys, located south of Seoul, the South Korean capital.

U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein recently said the military branch was preparing to place its fleet of nuclear-armed B-52 bombers on 24-hour alert status, noting that in a world where “we’ve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons,” it’s important to remain alert and remain prepared.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/10/23/north-korea-threats-at-unprecedented-critical-level-japan-official-says.html

The post North Korea threats at ‘unprecedented, critical’ level, Japan official says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Image: Reuters

North Korea has ramped up its missile testing in recent months.

CIA director Mike Pompeo has warned that North Korea is on the cusp of being able to hit the US with a nuclear missile.

He stressed Washington still preferred diplomacy and sanctions but said military force remained an option.

North Korea claims it already has the capability to strike the US.

Mr Pompeo also said that a US-Canadian hostage couple freed last week had in fact been held in Pakistan, rather than Afghanistan as initially assumed.

He said Canadian Joshua Boyle and his US wife Caitlan Coleman had been “held for five years inside of Pakistan”.

This contradicted accounts from Pakistani officials, who said the family had been held in Afghanistan, and moved across the border into the Kurram tribal district of Pakistan on 11 October.

Pyongyang’s ‘final step’
North Korea is “close enough now in their capabilities that from a US policy perspective we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving that objective,” Mr Pompeo said at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank, on Thursday.

“They are so far along in that, it’s now a matter of thinking about how do you stop the final step.”

GETTY IMAGES

He warned Pyongyang’s missile expertise was now advancing so quickly that it was hard for US intelligence to be sure when it would succeed.

“When you’re now talking about months our capacity to understand that at a detailed level is in some sense irrelevant,” he said.

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Last weekend, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had also insisted President Donald Trump wanted to resolve the confrontation with North Korea through diplomacy.

His statement had come after Mr Trump had publicly told him not to waste time seeking talks with Kim Jong-un.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41690253

The post CIA chief: North Korea ‘on cusp’ of nuclear capability first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.