TRUMP HEADS TO SOUTH KOREA: “Amid heightened tensions” VOA says. (bumped)

President Donald Trump is heading to Asia for a 12-day, five-nation tour with heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula and recent polls showing Americans consider North Korea to be the most immediate threat to the United States.

Trump is scheduled to visit South Korea (Nov. 7-8), the North’s rival, for the second stop of the trip.

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“Our goal is not war, but rather the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, last Friday.

That’s good cop. Darn fine good cop. Yes. Peace, brother. Let there be peace. Come, let us reason together.

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Around the time of the president’s presence on the peninsula, three U.S. aircraft carriers are expected to engage in their first combined exercise in a decade, displaying to Pyongyang the deterrence power of the world’s largest Navy.

There is increasing anxiety on both sides of the Pacific about what Trump views as necessary to achieve his administration’s vow to eliminate the threat to the United States posed by Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction.

Three carriers, which means three U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike groups. (Here’s an aircraft carrier strike group.) What a backdrop for a bad cop with his finger on the trigger.