Archive for 2017

ANDREW MALCOLM: Something is up in the Trump White House on North Korea.

Accumulating evidence, however, indicates something is up on North Korea. It could be real. It could be mere pressure, although after the sudden missile raid on Syria last week, diplomats would have to plan as if it’s real.

After visiting South Korea last month, Secy. of State Rex Tillerson pronounced the last 20 years of allied policy toward North Korea a failure. He said the era of “strategic patience” was over, adding all options are on the table, including military action. Secy. of Defense James Mattis delivered similar messages and Vice President Mike Pence is due there later this month.

When Pyongyang launched its next missile test, Tillerson issued an unusual 23-word response: ““North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”

Over the weekend the Pentagon ordered the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group to waters off the Korean Peninsula. Press reports said China was massing 150,000 troops on its border with North Korea, reports denied by a Beijing spokeswoman.

On Sunday H.R. McMaster said Trump had tasked the National Security Council to develop a full range of options to halt North Korea’s nuclear threat to the U.S. and regional allies.

Then, we checked President Trump’s public schedule for today. He’s got his daily intelligence briefing, followed by meetings with Homeland Security Secy. John Kelly, and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, and also McMaster.

And then, wait. What this? “In the evening, the President will have a working dinner with senior military leaders.”

Oh.

UNITED: COME FOR THE BLOOD-SPATTERING “RE-ACCOMMODATION,” STAY FOR THE DOXXING! Victim in United Flight Debacle Gets Smear Treatment.

Memories Pizza, Joe the Plumber, and the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi frat house could not be reached for comment. But as McKay Coppins of the Atlantic tweets in a helpful recommendation, “I’m going to preemptively leak all available dirt on myself before my next United flight just in case. Get ahead of the news cycle.”

Related: “Eric Schiffer, CEO of Reputation Management Consultants, termed United’s handling of the incident ‘brand suicide.’ ‘When you go onto a United flight, you shouldn’t have to be concerned there will be blood or you will get slammed in the face,’ Schiffer said.”

Or have your background printed in newspapers around the world. (At least one British paper ran with the “troubled past” angle on the passenger as well.)

UPDATE: “What chickens**t journalism. His ‘troubled past’ has nothing to do with his being dragged out of his seat on that airplane,” Brit Hume tweets.

QUESTION ASKED: How likely is another Korean War?

That may depend entirely on whether Kim Jong-Un understands that his regime — nor likely his own personal self — would not survive a Second Korean War, now that even China seems to have had its fill of his antics.

TO BE CLEAR, THESE WERE THE GOVERNMENT’S OWN CYANIDE TRAPS: Government bans cyanide traps in Idaho after boy hurt.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday that it had halted all use of the traps on state, federal and private land in Idaho in response to a petition from 19 conservation and wildlife groups.

The spring-activated devices called M-44s look like water sprinkler heads and are imbedded in the ground.

They spray cyanide powder when triggered by animals.

The boy was hurt and his Labrador retriever died in March on federally-owned land near the boy’s house in Pocatello.

Just in Idaho?

NEW LEFTY PLAN: Pack The Supreme Court When Democrats Are Back In Power. See, if you make the Supreme Court elective and term-limited, these issues go away . . . .

Also, by raising this possibility now, aren’t these Democrats making it more likely that Trump will push for an expanded judiciary? A 15-member Supreme Court would be a good idea anyway, since it would make each individual justice less important. And maybe the Courts of Appeals need to be expanded by 50%. To improve service to the public!

HMM: Senators Warn Mnuchin of National Security Implications of Russia CITGO Takeover.

In a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is chairman of the inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) say he needs to be prepared to protect U.S. energy infrastructure should Rosneft carry through with seizing control of CITGO Petroleum Corporation’s Venezuelan parent company, state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.

Oil giant Rosneft is owned by the Russian government and its chairman, Igor Sechin, is a former deputy prime minister under President Vladimir Putin and a close ally. Both the company and Sechin are currently covered under U.S. sanctions.

Amid economic turmoil in Venezuela and the stress of low oil prices, in December PDVSA leveraged 49.9 of its shares in CITGO as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan from Rosneft. With the situation in Venezuela further deteriorating, making default more likely.

I’ve read plenty of “Just let the Russians have it!” sentiment regarding Syria, and even the wider Middle East. Surely that sentiment doesn’t run as far as our own backyard, does it?

BRIDGET JOHNSON: A few takeaways from today’s NSC briefing on Syria.

•Sarin confirmed as the nerve agent used via testing on victims as well as symptoms. Secondary responders also suffered exposure symptoms.

•Su-22s from Shayrat airfield dropped the sarin on Khan Shaykhun; conventional weapons were dropped about six hours later on hospital treating sarin victims – “no comment” from officials on if Russia did latter.

•No ISIS or other terrorists in area have sarin (just mustard gas) – attack was “not a terrorist holding of sarin or a terrorist use of sarin”

More items at Hot Mic, full story to follow later on PJ Media.

YOU DON’T SAY: For Obama, Syria Chemical Attack Shows Risk of ‘Deals With Dictators’

Although friends and foes alike faulted him for not following through on his threat to retaliate when Syria gassed its own people in 2013, Mr. Obama would counter that he had actually achieved a better result through an agreement with President Bashar al-Assad to surrender all of his chemical weapons.

After last week, even former Obama aides assume that he will have to rethink that passage in his memoir. More than 80 civilians were killed in what Western analysts called a sarin attack by Syrian forces — a chilling demonstration that the agreement did not succeed. In recent days, former aides have lamented what they considered one of the worst moments of the Obama presidency and privately conceded that his legacy would suffer.

“If the Syrian government carried out the attack and the agent was sarin, then clearly the 2013 agreement didn’t succeed in its objective of eliminating Bashar’s C.W.,” or chemical weapons, said Robert Einhorn, who was the State Department special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control under Mr. Obama before the agreement. “Either he didn’t declare all his C.W. and kept some hidden in reserve, or he illegally produced some sarin after his stock was eliminated — most likely the former.”

The headline doesn’t have it quite right. Dealing from a position of resolution and strength, President Reagan was able to make some pretty good deals with the Soviet Union. The lesson from Syria is that irresolute naifs have no business conducting affairs of state with more ruthless leaders — or with anyone else, really.