Was The U.S. Threat To Send A Carrier Strike Force To The Korean Peninsula A Bluff?


New York Times: Aircraft Carrier Wasn’t Sailing to Deter North Korea, as U.S. Suggested

WASHINGTON — As worries deepened last week about whether North Korea would conduct a missile test, the White House declared that ordering an American aircraft carrier into the Sea of Japan would send a powerful deterrent signal and give President Trump more options in responding to the North’s provocative behavior.

The problem was, the carrier, the Carl Vinson, and the four other warships in its strike force were at that very moment sailing in the opposite direction, to take part in joint exercises with the Australian Navy in the Indian Ocean, 3,500 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula.

White House officials said on Tuesday they were relying on guidance from the Defense Department. Officials there described a glitch-ridden sequence of events, from a premature announcement of the deployment by the military’s Pacific Command to an erroneous explanation by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — all of which perpetuated the false narrative that an American armada was racing toward the waters off North Korea.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Talk about a failure to communicate a proper message and to coordinate operations. To pout it bluntly .... this looks

Subscribe to receive free email updates:

Related Posts :