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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
On September 11, 2001, we were deeply moved by the deaths of 2,996 people and the wounding of another 6,000.
In reaction to that shocking day, we launched a series of wars which have gone on for nearly 16 years, have cost more than $5 trillion, and have left more than 4,000 Americans dead and more than 50,000 severely wounded.
That has been the cost of an attack by 19 terrorists using commercial airliners as weapons.
Now consider the human cost of losing one American city to a nuclear strike.
I chose only one city to make a point about our current lack of seriousness in dealing with the spread of nuclear weapons to more and more unstable and dangerous countries.
The Los Angeles Timesreported on, August 16, 2006, that a nuclear attack on the Port of Long Beach would "have catastrophic consequences for the United States,” resulting in the instant deaths of 60,000 people and irradiation of another 150,000.
Additionally, the paper reported the economic loss would be ten times that of the September 11th terrorist attack in New York City.
The paper cited a report by the RAND Corporation’s Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy, which the article’s author wrote presented “a terrifying picture not only of the possibility of such an attack but of its immediate and long-term effects on Southern California, the nation, and the global economy."
The Long Beach estimate was for a 10-kiloton device – that’s half the size of the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki and two-thirds the size of “Little Boy,” which was dropped on Hiroshima.
The devastating impact of one nuclear device – even a "small" weapon – is so enormous that it must be taken incredibly seriously. The destruction that could be wrought by larger, modern devices is nearly unfathomable.
The burn casualties alone from one attack could be overwhelming. A 2007 study by the Center for Mass Destruction Defense at the University of Georgia noted there were about 1,500 beds for severe burn victims in the entire country and more than 80 percent are occupied at any one time. If a 550-kiloton bomb were to drop in Atlanta, it would produce an estimated 300,000 burn victims and collapse the entire health system, according to the study.
The website NUKEMAP allows you to visualize potential impacts of nuclear strikes and estimate casualty rates for a wide variety of cities. The images of what could happen are sobering.
I first became horrified by the impact of a nuclear weapon attack after reading Philip Wylie’s novel, Tomorrow, as a teenager living at Fort Riley in Kansas. Wylie outlined an attack that hit two neighboring cities (similar to Minneapolis and St. Paul). One city had effective civil defense preparations. The other city had ignored civil defense. The difference in casualties and in human tragedies was enormous.
The impact of this novel was translated into serious nonfiction in 1962, when Herman Kahn wrote Thinking about the Unthinkable. This was a vivid examination of the facts of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Kahn was dealing with superpower threats in which hundreds and even thousands of hydrogen warheads could be used. It would have been the end of our world.
The danger has since increased.
After three years of study, the Hart-Rudman Commission, which President Clinton and I created in 1998 to evaluate our national security strategy, warned that "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not help us."
Furthermore, the Commission reported that the dangerous combination of weapons proliferation and terrorism would make the U.S. homeland less secure, and that "a direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century.”
Among other things, the Commission suggested that we create an independent National Homeland Security Agency to plan, coordinate, and integrate government activities related to homeland security and ensure necessary resources were readily available -- in addition to making homeland protection the National Guard’s primary mission.
This proposal was for a dramatically more robust, nuclear war-oriented agency than the current Department of Homeland Security, which was created in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. As such, we still need to develop a totally new or separately structured civil defense system for responding, recovering, and rebuilding after a nuclear event.
These bold, decisive proposals for both active and passive defenses should be read in the context of the scale of pain a nuclear event would inflict upon America.
In a future newsletter, I will outline a robust response to the North Korean-Iranian nuclear threats.
The age of deterrence as the sole strategy may be over.
The age of deep defense against nuclear weapons may be beginning.
If we thought we could reliably deter North Korea or Iran, we would not be so intense about blocking their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
However, if we truly believe the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs might be used against us, we have an obligation to rethink our strategy and our investment in defense both civil and military.
Remember how you felt after 9/11, when almost 3,000 people were killed and 6,000 were injured. Now, imagine how you would feel if 60,000 people were vaporized and 150,000 were exposed to hazardous radiation in a Long Beach-size attack.
What is avoiding a disaster on that scale worth?
---------------------- Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions. Tags:Newt Gingrich, commentary, North Korea, missles, What is an American City worth, American CityTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Dinesh D'Souza: Fascism and Nazism are both phenomena of the left. This makes ideological sense, because at their core they represent ideologies of the centralized, all-powerful state. Moreover, fascism grew out of Marxism, and fascism’s founder Benito Mussolini, was a Marxist and lifelong socialist. Hitler, too, was a socialist who headed the National Socialist Party and in fact changed the name of the German Workers Party to make it the National Socialist German Workers Party.
How, then, did progressives in America re-define fascism and Nazism as phenomena of the right? This sleight-of-hand occurred after World War II, once fascism and Nazism were discredited with the reputation of Holocaust. Then progressives recognized it was important to cover up the leftist roots of fascism and Nazism and to move them from the left-wing column into the right-wing column.
The man most responsible for the progressive redefinition of fascism is Theodor Adorno, a German Marxist intellectual and a member of the influential Institute for Social Research, otherwise known as the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School scholars were leftists and most of them were refugees from Nazi Germany. Some settled in Europe; others like Adorno and Herbert Marcuse came to the United States.
Theodor Adorno, German Marxist
Adorno’s influence in defining how fascism came to be understood in America cannot be underestimated. When he and Marcuse arrived, America had just waged war against the Nazis, and after the war Nazism became the very measure of political horror and evil. Not much was known about fascism and Nazism, outside of superficial newspaper and radio coverage. In academia and the media, there was an acknowledged curiosity about what had attracted so many people to fascism and Nazism, with its attendant anti-Semitism.
Marcuse and Adorno were Jewish, and so could be expected to know about anti-Semitism and the fate of the Jews. And they were refugees from the Nazis, so they could claim to be speaking about Nazism, as it were, “from the inside.” Their work was embraced by the American Jewish Committee, which naturally felt that these two German exiles would know precisely the nature of Nazism, fascism and anti-Semitism and how to overcome them. The two Frankfurt School scholars basically shaped what was considered anti-fascist education in the United States.
In reality, the American Jewish Committee had no idea that Adorno and Marcuse had their own agenda: not to fight fascism per se, but to promote Marxism and a leftist political agenda. Marxism and fascism are quite close; they are kindred collectivist ideologies of socialism. Their common enemy is, of course, free markets and the various institutions of the private sector, including the church and the traditional family. Marxism and fascism both sought to get rid of capitalism and remake the social order. So did Marcuse, Adorno and the Frankfurt School.
Adorno decided to repackage fascism as a form of capitalism and moral traditionalism. In effect, they reinvented fascism as a phenomenon of the political right. In this preposterous interpretation, fascism was remade into two things that real fascists despised: free markets and support for a traditional moral order. With a vengeance that appears only comic in retrospect, the Frankfurt School launched a massive program to uproot nascent fascism in the United States by making people less attached to the core economic and social institutions of American society.
The classic document in this regard is Adorno’s famous F-Scale. The F stands for fascism. Adorno outlined the scale in his 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality. The basic argument of the book was that fascism is a form of authoritarianism and that the worst manifestation of authoritarianism is self-imposed repression. Fascism develops early, Adorno argued, and we can locate it in young people’s attachments to religious superstition and conventional middle-class values about family, sex and society.
With a straight face, Adorno produced a list of questions aimed at detecting fascist affinities. “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” “Homosexuality is a particularly rotten form of delinquency.” “No insult to our honor should ever go unpunished.” “No matter how they act on the surface, men are interested in women for only one reason.” Basically, a yes answer to these questions showed that you were a budding fascist.
The underlying logic of Adorno’s position was that German and Italian fascism were, at their core, characterized by internal psychological and sexual repression. A moment’s reflection, however, shows why this position is nonsense. By and large, the social attitudes toward religion, the family and sexuality were actually quite similar across these countries, allowing for some modest variation. One might speculatively argue that the Germans of the time were more uptight than, say, the French, but who would argue that the Italians were more repressed than, say, the English?
So Adorno’s F-scale had no power to explain why fascism established itself so powerfully and destructively in Germany and Italy but not elsewhere. Most real fascists, historian A. James Gregor dryly observes in The Ideology of Fascism, “would not have made notably high scores.” Now there is one question that would in fact have uncovered fascist affinities: Do you support increasing the power of the centralized state over individuals, families, churches and the private sector? Significantly, Adorno did not include this question on the F-scale, presumably because it would have brought enthusiastic yes responses from progressives and Democrats.
Given the patent absurdity of Adorno’s antifascism, with its obviously fraudulent and pseudo-scientific F-scale, why did the mainstream of American academia fall for it? Why did they go along with Adorno and proclaim his work the definitive basis for antifascist education? The short answer is that even then academia had a strong progressive tilt, and the progressives discovered the benefits of embracing Adorno’s thesis.
Here, after all, was a German Jewish scholar declaring fascism a phenomenon of the right. Clearly he was sticking fascism on conservatives who supported capitalism and affirmed religion and traditional families. This was a lie—real fascists detest those institutions and want to destroy them—but it was a politically convenient lie.
So the progressives delightedly climbed aboard the bandwagon and cheered him on, and the cheering continues. In 2005, for example, the progressive sociologist Alan Wolfe admitted flaws in Adorno’s work but praised The Authoritarian Personality as “more relevant now” because it “seems to capture the way many Christian-right politicians view the world.”
Adorno’s value to such people is that he empowers them to say, “Down with fascism! Now let’s get rid of conservatism and expose those evil people on the right.” And today Adorno’s deception enables the left to call Trump a fascist and Republicans the modern incarnation of the Nazi Party. Only by understanding this big lie can we inoculate ourselves against it and correctly locate fascism and Nazism where they have always belonged—on the political left.
--------------------- Dinesh D’Souza’s new book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left is published by Regnery. Tags:Dinesh D’Souza, new book, The Big Lie, exposing Nazi Roots, American Left, Theodor Adorno, German MarxistTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Standing Firm, How Far Gone, The Winning Strategy, Other Headlines
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Standing Firm - Multiple big media outlets were in a tizzy again this morning. According to them, President Trump was "ratcheting up" tensions with North Korea when he wrote this tweet: "Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong-un will find another path!"
The president's tweet is actually an effort to PREVENT a war. Trump is telling Kim that if he hits Guam or kills U.S. soldiers or attacks our navy, North Korea will pay a horrendous price. Any U.S. president who failed to respond to an attack on our people or territory would be inviting worse attacks and/or blackmail.
Think about the message that is being sent by our left-wing media and political elites. They appear to be suggesting that it is America that must back down when confronted by a rogue nation with nuclear weapons.
Incredibly, they are very close to telling our enemies that the United States should never go to war, even if we are attacked.
How Far Gone Is The Left? - If you needed any more evidence of just how far gone the left is when it comes to critical issues involving our national security, consider these examples:
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said this: "I do believe North Korea is [issuing] threats but I think there are some things they want from us. And we have to find out whether or not we can work with them on the things that they are asking for." In other words, Waters is inviting nuclear blackmail and extortion.
More than 60 House Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson condemning President Trump's "irresponsible and dangerous" rhetoric. They urged Tillerson to ensure that the president and other officials speak and act "with the utmost caution and restraint."
These so-called "progressives" are the same type of people who called Winston Churchill a warmonger in the 1930s. We are not the problem. It is America's enemies who should be acting with "the utmost caution and restraint."
Former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice published an editorial in the New York Times yesterday. Here was Rice's "expert" opinion: "History shows that we can . . . tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea -- the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War."
That is the same misguided reasoning Obama used to justify his nuclear deal with Iran. (More on that below.) It is nonsense. The Soviets were, if nothing else, rational. They had a history with us in World War II. They knew what we were capable of. Iran and North Korea are controlled by zealots with zero respect for the United States.
North Korea's ability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon (the essential step to putting a nuclear warhead on a missile) was news to most Americans. But Barack Obama knew about it in 2013. Given the extensive coordination between North Korea and Iran, this revelation makes Obama's 2015 nuclear deal with Iran much worse.
Even if you assume that it prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons, one of the biggest flaws with that deal is that it did not stop Iran's development of missiles and ICBMs. Well, Iran doesn't need to develop its own nuclear weapons. Thanks to Obama, the ayatollah can simply get one from his ally North Korea, while he builds his own long-range missiles.
The Winning Strategy - For decades, Republican consultants have suggested that the GOP would be a stronger party if only it jettisoned its positions on controversial "values issues" and focused almost exclusively on the free market, capital gains tax cuts and entitlement reform.
I'm all for free markets. I understand the case for lower tax rates on capital gains. And I know spending reforms are necessary. But these are not issues that win the hearts and minds of most voters.
Perhaps you recall the "autopsy" the party conducted after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012. It reinforced the Beltway's group think and the conventional wisdom. It urged the party to move left on social issues and immigration. It is this mindset that explains much of the establishment's hostility to Donald Trump.
Trump eschewed establishment Republican orthodoxy with his bold comments on the sanctity of life and immigration. Trump also vowed to protect Social Security.
And, as we all know, he wasn't supposed to win. So how did he do it?
The fact is virtually everything the high-priced Beltway consultants have been saying is wrong. Several recent studies analyzing 2016 have concluded that Hillary Clinton lost because of cultural and values issues.
More evidence came in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Referring to the idea of a "Republican Workers Party," Professor F. H. Buckley wrote:"The sweet spot in American politics is . . . economic liberals and social conservatives. It's the place where presidential elections are usually won, and the winner is usually going to be the candidate who won't touch Social Security and who promises to nominate judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia. In other words -- Donald Trump."Rather than singing the praises of Wall Street, Republicans should promote Main Street. Be the party of small business, not big business. Tax reform is good, but push tax cuts for working families, not billionaires.
Talk about creating jobs in America, not free trade and globalism. Voters want border security, not open borders. They want criminals handcuffed, not our cops.
And be bold and unapologetic in defending traditional American values -- love of God, country and family. Other Headlines
Voters strongly support the RAISE Act, immigration reform legislation endorsed by President Trump.
President Trump stands by his policy prohibiting transgender individuals from serving in the military.
The Trump Justice Department supports Ohio's effort to clean up its voter rolls, reversing Obama-era opposition.
Must see TV -- Dr. Sebastian Gorka schools politically correct commentators on radical Islamic terrorism.
Obama-appointed federal judge orders new search for Clinton Benghazi emails.
Troops are being deployed to secure the southern border -- Canada's southern border as illegal immigrants self-deport from the United States.
The far-left magazine The Nation has published an article in which former intelligence experts assert that nobody, including the Russians, hacked the Democratic National Committee. They claim that the disclosure of the emails occurred as a result of an internal leak. If they are correct, this is a huge scandal.
------------------- Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Standing Firm, How Far Gone, The Winning Strategy, Other HeadlinesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
New Study: Marijuana Smokers Three Times More Likely to Die of Hypertension
by Jerry Cox: A study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology this week has found marijuana use may increase a person’s risk of dying from hypertension more than threefold–and that the risk increases with each year a person smokes marijuana.
The study’s authors write:Adjusted hazard ratios for death from hypertension among marijuana users compared to non-marijuana users was 3.42 . . . From our results, marijuana use may increase the risk for hypertension mortality. Increased duration of marijuana use is associated with increased risk of death from hypertension. Recreational marijuana use potentially has cardiovascular adverse effects which needs further investigation.The study also concluded the cardiovascular risk posed by smoking marijuana may be greater than that of cigarette smoking.
Of course this is not the first study to find marijuana may be harmful to a person’s health. Marijuana use has been linked to stroke, cardiovascular problems, and even schizophrenia.
This underscores what we have said for years: Marijuana may be many things, but “harmless” simply is not one of them.
Read this latest study here.
------------------- Jerry Cox is the founder and president of Family Council and the Education Alliance. Tags:New Study, Marijuana Smokers, Three Times More Likely, to Die, Hypertension, Jerry Cox, Family CouncilTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Tags:President Trump, Defense Secretary Mattis, very stern warning, Kim Jong Un, editorial cartoon, AF BrancoTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Sanctuary Cities Betray America, Americans And Immigrants
When facts are stubborn things.
by Michael Cutler: Threats to Americans posed by international terrorists and violent transnational gangs have increased in recent years. In addition, recent congressional hearings have highlighted the extreme levels of violence faced by members of America's ethnic immigrant communities at the hands of gangs, such as MS-13, due to border security and immigration law enforcement failures. Nevertheless, mayors of “Sanctuary Cities” continue to shield illegal aliens -- and the foreign criminals and terrorists among them -- from detection, with some now filing lawsuits against the Trump administration in response to Attorney General Session’s intentions to cut funding to those cities.
Those mayors want federal funds but blithely refuse to assist the federal government in enforcing immigration laws that are key elements of national security and public safety.
That lawsuit and the statements of Mayor Rahm Emanuel reported on in that article. rise to a level of chutzpah that far and away surpasses the traditional example of chutzpah: the young man who, having been convicted of the murder of his own parents pleads for mercy at sentencing because he’s an orphan.
“Sanctuary Cities” should actually be referred to as “Magnet Cities” because they attract illegal aliens and the transnational criminals and fugitives and international terrorists to live in ethnic immigrant communities endangering the lives of those very same immigrants “Sanctuary mayors” claim they want to protect.
Additionally Third World illegal alien workers have Third World expectations of wages and working conditions, creating a “race to the bottom” for all workers who face illegal and immoral competition from those illegal aliens.
America’s borders immigration laws have nothing to do with race, religion or ethnicity.
Where border protection is concerned, the aptly named CBP (Customs and Border Protection) has an annual budget in excess of fourteen billion dollars and employs more than 60,000 people Including Border Patrol agents who are charged with interdicting smugglers/human traffickers and their illicit cargo of smuggled aliens and contraband that evade the inspections process at ports of entry.
CBP Inspectors are responsible for enforcing and administering our immigration and customs laws at ports of entry.
Where aliens are concerned, That vital inspection process is guided by Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182 which enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded. Among these classes of excludible aliens are those who suffer from dangerous communicable, diseases or extreme mental illness as are convicted felons, human rights violators, war criminals, terrorists and spies.
Although Immigration anarchists refer to aliens who run our nation’s borders as entering the United States “Undocumented” in reality they enter the United States without inspection.
This creates an obvious threat to national security and public safety.
Aliens who evade the inspections process are violating serious federal laws and, if that alien had been previously deported and has been convicted of committing serious crimes may face up to 20 years in prison. The relevant section of law is Title 8 U.S.C. 1326 -- Reentry After Deportation (Removal).
It is noteworthy that the crime of Reentry After Deportation is the most frequently prosecuted violation of federal law. On a personal note, this is especially satisfying to me, I approached Senator Alphonse D’Amato in the early 1980’s to convince him to create the separate crime of unlawful reentry by criminal aliens with a maximum penalty of 20 years of incarceration.
The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel detailed numerous failures of the immigration system that enabled terrorists, and not only the 19 hijackers who participated in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 but many others as well, to enter the United States and embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparations.
The preface of that official report began with this paragraph:It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.Page 54 of this report contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot.”
Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.
Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.
Sanctuary cities not only aid, abet and encourage illegal aliens to enter the United States illegally and remain here thereafter illegally, these cities also harbor them and shield them from detection by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). In so doing these cities are not only in violation of Title 8, U.S.C. 1324(a) but are also obstructing the enforcement of our immigration laws that are, as the 9/11 Commission noted, essential to protecting the United States against terror attacks.
Mayor Emanuel and other sanctuary city mayors fatuously and deceptively argue that if police officers work with ICE that illegal aliens who fall victim to crime, or have important information about criminals, will not come forward for fear that ICE will deport them.
This lie vilifies immigration agents, endangering their safety and undermining their effectiveness by discouraging illegal aliens and, perhaps others, from providing them with vital information to combat human traffickers, members of violent transnational gangs and international terrorist organizations.
Although it is rarely, if ever, reported in the media, there are specific visas that can be provided to illegal alien crime victims if they cooperate with law enforcement providing a strong incentive for them to cooperate with police and other such agencies.
Politicians who are truly concerned about the vulnerability of illegal aliens crime victims should order their police departments to work with ICE to make certain that these aliens are helped.
Mayors who argue that they are protecting the “Constitutional rights” of illegal aliens, ignore the fundamental and irrefutable fact that illegal aliens have no right to remain in the United States in violation of our immigration laws.
For most crimes, the venue for the prosecution is determined by where the crime is committed.
A criminal who robs a bank in Texas and drives to Chicago must be extradited back to Texas to be prosecuted.
However, an alien who reenters the U.S. after deportation may be prosecuted wherever he/she is apprehended because the venue for that prosecution is determined by where the alien was arrested and not where he/she ran the border.
The crimes of Entry Without Inspection and Illegal Reentry after deportation, are known as “Continuing offenses.” Such aliens do not magically somehow become “less illegally present” if they can get from the border to a place at significant distance from the border.
When police respond to a call that a bank robbery is in progress, they are certainly not told to not pursue the suspects if they manage to leave the bank before the police get there.
Aliens who run the borders, not unlike those bank robbers, are “fair game” wherever they are caught. Furthermore, they must be caught because they violated our borders and our laws that are our first and last line of defense against international terrorists, transnational criminals and others whose presence is a violation of our laws and our nation’s sovereignty.
Although known criminal aliens should be prioritized no illegal alien, even those with no known criminal history should ever feel safe from discovery, arrest and deportation (removal) to deter illegal entry.
Additionally, terrorists and fugitive are generally scrupulously careful to not violate laws that would call attention to them- this is an embedding tactic the 9/11 Commission warned about.
Politicians who support “Sanctuary Cities” must find no “Sanctuary” from voters on Election Day.
-------------- Michael Cutler is a retired Senior Special Agent of the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) whose career spanned some 30 years. He served as an Immigration Inspector, Immigration Adjudications Officer and spent 26 years as an agent with half of his career in the Drug Task Force. He has testified before well over a dozen congressional hearings, provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission. His website is michaelcutler.net. He also writes for FrontPage Mag a publication of theDavid Horowitz Freedom Center. David Horowitz is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service Tags:Michael Cutler, FrontPage Mag, Sanctuary Cities, Betray America, Americans, ImmigrantsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Patrick Buchanan: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight,” Samuel Johnson observed, “it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
And the prospect of a future where Kim Jong Un can put a nuclear weapon on a U.S. city is going to cause this nation to reassess the risks and rewards of the American Imperium.
First, some history.
“Why should Americans be first to die in any second Korean war?” this writer asked in 1999 in “A Republic, Not an Empire.”
“With twice the population of the North and twenty times its economic power, South Korea … is capable of manning its own defense. American troops on the DMZ should be replaced by South Koreans.”
This was denounced as neo-isolationism. And, in 2002, George W. Bush declared the U.S. “will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
Bluster and bluff. In 2006, Pyongyang called and raised and tested an atom bomb. Now Kim Jong Un is close to an ICBM.
Our options?
As Kim believes the ability to hit America with a nuclear weapon is the only certain way he has of deterring us from killing his regime and him, he will not be talked out of his ICBM. Nor, short of an embargo-blockade by China, will sanctions keep him from his goal, to which he inches closer with each missile test.
As for the “military option,” U.S. strikes on Kim’s missile sites could cause him to unleash his artillery on Seoul, 35 miles south. In the first week of a second Korean war, scores of thousands could be dead.
If North Korea’s artillery opened up, says Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the U.S. would be forced to use tactical atomic weapons to stop the carnage. Kim could then give the suicidal order to launch his nukes.
A third option is to accept and live with a North Korean ICBM, as we have lived for decades with the vast nuclear arsenals of Russia and China.
Now, assume the best: We get through this crisis without a war, and Kim agrees to stop testing ICBMs and nuclear warheads.
Does anyone believe that, given his youth, his determination to drive us off the peninsula, and his belief that only an ICBM can deter us, this deal will last and he will abandon his nuclear program?
Given concessions, Kim might suspend missile and nuclear tests. But again, we deceive ourselves if we believe he will give up the idea of acquiring the one weapon that might ensure regime survival.
Hence, assuming this crisis is resolved, what does the future of U.S.-North Korean relations look like?
To answer that question, consider the past.
In 1968, North Korea hijacked the USS Pueblo on the high seas and interned its crew. LBJ did nothing. In April 1969, North Korea shot down an EC-121, 100 miles of its coast, killing the crew. Nixon did nothing.
Under Jimmy Carter, North Koreans axe-murdered U.S. soldiers at Panmunjom. We defiantly cut down a nearby tree.
Among the atrocities the North has perpetrated are plots to assassinate President Park Chung-hee in the 1960s and ’70s, the Rangoon bombing that wiped out much of the cabinet of Chun Doo-hwan in 1983, and the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858, killing all on board in 1987.
And Kim Jong Un has murdered his uncle and brother.
If the past is prologue, and it has proven to be, the future holds this. A renewal of ICBM tests until a missile is perfected. Occasional atrocities creating crises between the U.S. and North Korea. America being repeatedly dragged to the brink of a war we do not want to fight.
As Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Sunday, such a war would be “catastrophic. … A conflict in North Korea … would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”
When the lesson sinks in that a war on the peninsula would be a catastrophe, and a growing arsenal of North Korean ICBMs targeted on America is intolerable, the question must arise:
Why not move U.S. forces off the peninsula, let South Korean troops replace them, sell Seoul all the modern weapons it needs, and let Seoul build its own nuclear arsenal to deter the North?
Remove any incentive for Kim to attack us, except to invite his own suicide. And tell China: Halt Kim’s ICBM program, or we will help South Korea and Japan become nuclear powers like Britain and France.
Given the rising risk of our war guarantees, from the eastern Baltic to the Korean DMZ — and the paltry rewards of the American Imperium — we are being bled from Libya to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen — a true America First foreign policy is going to become increasingly attractive.
Kim’s credible threat to one day be able to nuke a U.S. city is going to concentrate American minds wonderfully.
-------------------- Patrick Buchanan is currently a conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He blogs at the Patrick J. Buchanan. Tags:Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, Unites States, North Korea, American Empire, Worth the PriceTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Plenty Of Blame To Go Around On The North Korean Crisis
by Printus LeBlanc: For the last three decades, the U.S. has been practicing Neville Chamberlain style diplomacy with North Korea. Democrat and Republican administrations have continued to “kick the can” down the road with regards to North Korea. “As long as we don’t have to deal with it” seemed like an official motto. Now, a crisis not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis, has been dropped into the lap of President Donald Trump and his administration. What happened, and how did we get here?
The current crisis can be traced back to the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Yes, the Korean war took place from 1950-1953, and yes, every President since the war has made monumental mistakes with North Korea. But this is an article, not a thesis, so we will start with the appeasement under the first Bush presidency following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In an attempt to persuade North Korean leadership to permit international inspections of its nuclear power plants, the administration announced the removal tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991. The weapons were stationed there to guard against the overwhelming numbers the north possessed in personnel, artillery, and armor. This sent a clear signal the U.S. was willing to negotiate away assets for nothing, and North Korea could buy time by participating in the diplomatic dance.
The Clinton administration did no better. On April 1, 1993 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported the regime was not in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which North Korea joined in 1985, and went into force in 1992. The Clinton administration was extremely disturbed by this, and began making battle plans to attack sites in North Korea that supported the nuclear program, and defend South Korea from the inevitable retaliation, op plan 5027.
Enter former President Jimmy Carter at the eleventh hour. The former President, known for his foreign policy disasters, went to North Korea as a private citizen with the intent to “fix” the simmering situation. Carter reached a “deal” with North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, and announced the deal to CNN via phone. Keep in mind, this happened while the Clinton administration was preparing to bomb the rogue nation, and without the administration’s knowledge or authority. President Bill Clinton found out while watching CNN.
The talks following the announcement led to a deal known as the U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework. The final objective of the agreement was to provide North Korea with light water reactors, and a normalization of relations between the U.S. and North Korea. The normalization of relations was intended to be a step-by-step process working towards the lifting of sanctions and full diplomatic relations.
The agreement was a disaster from the beginning. North Korea continually denied and stalled during the talks, all the while launching ballistic missiles over Japan and denying access to supposed nuclear sites. By this time North Korea had figured out that as long as they are pretending to talk, they could get away with just about anything. The agreement finally fell apart in late 2002 under President George W. Bush’s first term.
The North Koreans themselves admitted to Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, while in North Korea, to carrying on with a clandestine uranium enrichment program. From there the agreement started to unravel. Many were quick to point fingers at the Bush administration, but Secretary of State Colin Powell reminded everyone that the cheating started years ago stating, “as soon as the documents were signed and agreed to, and before the ink was dry, the North Koreans started developing nuclear weapons through another technology: enriched uranium,” while testifying before a subcommittee on the Foreign Operations Budget.
Following the dissolution of the agreed framework, the North Koreans returned to an old tactic, keep talking and keep stalling. Rounds of negotiations were conducted, including the famed six-party talks that produced nothing substantive. After months of negotiations, the North would agree to a site inspection to take place in a few months. When the time came for the inspection, access would only be granted to part of a site, requiring more rounds of negotiations to inspect further.
On October 9, 2006, the diplomacy games paid off for North Korea. After decades of deceit, the rogue regime detonated its first nuclear device underground. It was a small device, yielding around 1 kiloton, but U.S. intelligence confirmed the detonation of a nuclear device through air sample tests.
Not to over simplify it, but there are three key components needed in a nuclear weapons program. North Korea now had two of the three. Weapons grade nuclear material is needed, a triggering device to detonate the nuclear material, and a delivery vehicle for the weapon.
Following the detonation, North Korea continued the stalling techniques during the Bush administration, all the while perfecting the bomb design and increasing the yield. The North Koreans were also still looking to perfect the third component, the delivery vehicle.
The Bush administration was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and seemed content to kick the can down the road for the next President. Just as his two predecessors had done.
President Barack Obama came into the White House with a wave of hope and change within the foreign policy community. Well, nothing changed. For eight years the North Koreans did what they did to the previous three Presidents, they pretended to negotiate while advancing all their programs.
Under the Obama administration more nuclear tests and ballistic missile tests were conducted, with the most important test coming on September 9, 2016. Seismic analysis confirmed the test was the largest yield to date, 10 kilotons, but more importantly, it was reported the test was a warhead test. Previous devices detonated were too large to fit on an ICBM. The test proved North Korea now had the ability to mount a nuclear device on an ICBM.
So here we are in the Trump administration, with North Korea having the capability to produce, detonate, and mount a nuclear weapon on top of an ICBM. The latest missile test confirms North Korea has an ICBM with the range to hit the U.S., but not the ability. The North Koreans have reportedly not perfected the reentry aspect of the delivery vehicle — yet.
Remember, when you listen to a talking head claiming to be a foreign policy “expert,” they were probably part of the establishment that put the U.S. in this situation in the first place. If they complain about the language the President uses, ask them if the language they used worked.
As you can clearly see, the current problem is decades in the making. Kim Jong Un has threatened the U.S. several times, and is quickly approaching the ability to carry out those threats. What sense does it make to stay on the path that we know has already failed?
-------------------- Printus LeBlanc is a contributing reporter with Americans for Limited Government Tags:Printus LeBlanc, Americans for Limited government, blame, North Korean Crisis, North KoreaTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: When a Hollywood celebrity testifies before Congress, usually there is lots of fawning press coverage but very little of substance that can influence public policy. At the House Oversight Committee hearing on “Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses,” you had just the opposite. Some important things were said but it received little press coverage. Perhaps that is due to the fact that conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and comedian Adam Carolla were testifying.
Adam Carolla talked about the changes on college campuses. In the past, he traveled to various universities and had a robust exchange of ideas and views. Today, he and Dennis Prager had trouble just getting on one college campus in California.
He has a solution. Adults need to start acting like adults. “We’re talking a lot about the kids, and I think they’re just that, kids . . . They grew up dipped in Purell, playing soccer games where they never kept score . . . We need the adults to start being the adults.”
He uses a great analogy. “Studies have shown that if you take people and put them in a zero gravity environment like astronauts, they lose muscle mass, they lose bone density. We’re taking these kids, in the name of protection, we’re putting them in a zero gravity environment, and they are losing muscle mass and bone density. They need to live in a world that has gravity . . . Our plan is to put them in the bubble, keep them away from everything and somehow they will come out stronger when they emerge from the bubble. Well, that’s not happening.”
He ended his testimony with this plea: “Children are the future, but we are the present, and we are the adults and we need to act like it. And I feel that what’s going on on these campuses is — we need law and order.” He is right. Adults need to act like adults, and college administrators need to bring some law and order on the campus.
-------------- Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service Tags:Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, Adam Carolla, Campus SpeechTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
SMU Reverses Policy, Will Allow 9/11 Memorial on Lawn
by Todd Starnes: Southern Methodist University’s recent decision to relocate a memorial to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks over concerns students might be “triggered” caused outrage across the fruited plain.
But the university announced late Wednesday they are reversing that decision and will allow Young Americans For Freedom to post nearly 3,000 American flags on the Dallas Hall Lawn to honor those killed by the Muslim terrorists.
“I thank the students from across campus who came together in the spirit of mutual respect and civil discourse to achieve this outcome,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner in a prepared statement. “Throughout these discussions, students have expressed their commitment to freedom of expression – a value the University shares.”
The university had initially banished all lawn displays, citing a revised policy aimed at protecting students from “harmful or triggering” messages. Click here to read the original story.
“While the University respects the rights of students to free speech, the University respects the right of members of the community to avoid messages that are triggering, harmful, or harassing,” the policy read.
SMU stressed that its policy covered all lawn displays, not just the 9/11 memorial.
However, the decision was roundly denounced and condemned by students, alumni, donors and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
SMU said they reached an agreement with student leaders to return displays to the prominent lawn space.
“This agreement provides dedicated spaces for lawn displays while also preserving open spaces for studying, classes, events and recreation,” a university statement read. “The goal is to balance the needs of all campus community members in use of this historic space.”
Young Americans For Freedom should be commended for taking a noble stand. They recognized that free speech was under assault and they did something about it.
And I suspect many readers of this column called, emailed and petitioned Southern Methodist University to reverse its policy. College students do not have a constitutional right not to be offended.
What happened at Southern Methodist University is an example of how a wrong can be righted when freedom lovers stand together.
Well done, patriots!
------------------ Todd Starnes (@toddstarnes) is A Christian Conservative, the host of Fox News & Commentary and heard daily on 250+ radio stations and on his iTune podcasts. Tags:Todd Starnes, Texas, SMU, Southern Methodist University, will allow, Young Americans For Freedom, 9/11 Lawn MemorialTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Bankrupt Puerto Rico Gives Millions to Sketchy Firms With Government Ties
Officials in Puerto Rico have issued 107 consulting
contracts since January to questionable recipients.
by Ethan Barton: Bankrupt Puerto Rico has awarded nearly $11 million in consulting contracts to various businesses, including marketing, lobbying, and public relations firms, some with ties to government officials.
The U.S. territory, which filed for bankruptcy in May, recently closed nearly 200 schools to save $7 million. Yet officials on the Caribbean island also issued 107 consulting contracts since January to questionable recipients, according to government documents and media reports compiled by QE Intelligence, a research firm.
Puerto Rico spent $256 billion in federal funds from 1990 through 2009, but collected only $74 billion in tax revenue, according to an Economist report. Additionally, Puerto Rico is required to prioritize payments to creditors, except to fund essential services.
About $4.7 million in consulting contracts went to companies with ties to government officials, more than $800,000 of which were public relations groups.
Two consulting contracts totaling nearly $389,000, for example, were awarded to the marketing consulting firm KOI Americas, records kept by the Puerto Rico comptroller show. Edwin Miranda—a friend of former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno—owns KOI, which has received a large number of high-value contracts.
KOI also received millions more in Puerto Rican government funding for advertising contracts over the same time.
Similarly, Rafael Cerame, press secretary for former Gov. Pedro Rosello, formed the public relations and marketing firm RCD International, which has received three consulting contracts worth a total of $298,000, records show.
More than $2 million in consulting contracts went to other lobbying, market research, and public relations firms without apparent government ties. More than $700,000 went to businesses with histories of shady dealings in government contracts.
The Municipal Consultants Group, for example, has received three consulting contracts for a total of nearly $250,000 since January, comptroller records show. The firm faced scrutiny and requests for investigations after it was discovered it shared office space and personnel with a group hired to audit Municipal Consultants’ government contracts.
Another four consulting contracts worth more than $350,000 total were awarded to firms founded by Oscar Santamaria, who previously faced investigations regarding other contracts and Rosello’s pension.
Little information exists about two companies that received three consulting contracts. Arroyo-Flores Consulting Group received nearly $391,000, yet has an almost blank Facebook page with only three likes. Its website provides little information and doesn’t list the group’s executives.
The other, the MAC Group, which received more than $364,000, seems to have no actual website and little information is included in its founding documents.
The bulk of another $2.6 million in consulting contracts went to the Ankura Consulting Group. The firm’s Puerto Rico office opened Feb. 14, and it received a $2.4 million award nine days later.
The Puerto Rico Senate awarded a $30,000 consulting contract to singer Glenn Monroig. The author of a book about Puerto Rican corruption, Antonio Quinones Calderon, took a $65,000 consulting contract. Few other details are available about either contract.
Another group received a $40,000 contract, which was 10 times more than the company’s worth. One business got a consulting contract of more than $34,200 the same month the firm was formed, documents from the Puerto Rico secretary of state and comptroller show.
--------------- Ethan Barton (@ethanrbarton) is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. H/T: The Daily Signal Tags:Bankrupt, Puerto Rico, Gives Millions, to Sketchy Firms, With Government Ties, Ethan Barton, The Daily Caller, The Daily SignalTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Tech Guru Unveils New Battery To Challenge Lithium-Ion
Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy
by Tsvetana Paraskova: The rise of electric vehicles and the quest to find solutions to energy storage for the renewables industry have created a breeding ground for tech experts to develop battery technologies.
Last week, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy and the company he currently backs, Ionic Materials, unveiled a solid-state alkaline battery design that they claim would be cheaper and safer than the lithium-ion battery.
“What people didn’t really realize is that alkaline batteries could be made rechargeable,” Joy told Bloomberg in a phone interview last week. “I think people had given up,” Joy noted.
The three main possible applications of the new alkaline battery technology would be consumer electronics, electric cars, and energy storage for the power grid, according to the developers.
However, also according to Joy, the company just has the material, and the technology is not ready to go commercial right away. The rechargeable alkaline battery technology could be ready for commercial use within five years, Joy told Bloomberg, adding that Ionic Materials didn’t have a factory to manufacture the tech.
The prototype designs have demonstrated up to 400 recharge cycles for the alkaline battery, and Ionic Materials believes that the number of recharge cycles could be tripled, the New York Times reports.
On the downside, apart from uncertain commercial future, is the fact that Ionic’s first alkaline batteries would be heavier than the lithium-ion batteries today.
Alkaline batteries mostly use zinc and manganese.
Ionic Materials has made progress toward developing a design for an alkaline battery that would use cheaper aluminum instead of zinc, Joy told the NYT. Aluminum-based alkaline designs could potentially weigh less than lithium-ion designs and could be cheaper than the alkaline designs today, according to the NYT.
“They use an unusual electrolyte to come up with a battery that uses common cheap materials and is benign,” Amory Lovins, the founder of non-profit sustainable energy research group Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) -- at whose summit Ionic unveiled its technology -- told the NYT, referring to the company.
However, Lovins is cautious about forecasts whether the alkaline design would be such as to hit the mass market.
“Batteries are very difficult and I want to see what they have and what can be measured and proven and whether it will get to market,” Lovins told the NYT.
Meanwhile, lithium-ion battery prices have dropped a lot over the past few years. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), the lithium-ion battery pack prices dropped from US $1,000/kWh in 2010 to US $273/ kWh last year.
Large demand for lithium-ion batteries is predicted ahead, with BNEF expecting EVs sales to accelerate and make up 54 percent of new car sales by 2040. One of the main drivers of EV growth, according to BNEF, will be tumbling battery prices.
“The real take-off for EVs will happen in the second half of the 2020s due to plunging lithium-ion battery prices, which are set to fall by more than 70% by 2030,” according to BNEF’s Electric Vehicle Outlook 2017.
EVs adoption and the need to find energy storage solutions will charge the battery race in the years and decades to come. The key question here is, will the battery design breakthroughs turn from lab tests into viable mass market energy options?
----------------- Tsvetana Paraskova authored this article contributed by James Stafford the editor of OilPrice.com, the leading online energy news site, to the ARRA News Service. Tags:Tsvetana Paraskova, James Stafford, Oilprice.com, Tech Guru, Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, New Battery, To Challenge Lithium-IonTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Tags:Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, mainstream media, looney, Cuckoo's Nest, mental derangementTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Rick Moran: In the wake of this shocking report in the Washington Post on North Korea's nuclear and ICBM program being far more advanced than we previously believed, Foreign Policy published an article by one of the premier nuclear experts in the U.S. that essentially says the game is over and North Korea has won.
Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control and nuclear arms expert, has been following the North Korean nuclear program for decades. He makes a convincing case that the Kim regime has more nuclear weapons than we thought and that from the very start of their nuclear program, they decided to build miniaturized bombs to fit on top of long-range missiles.
Lewis believes that the North Koreans went about building their nuclear program differently than some other nuclear powers. Instead of beginning with an implosion device -- a "Fat Man" bomb using highly enriched uranium -- they strove to build small, compact plutonium bombs.
Plutonium bombs are significantly more powerful than bombs that use highly enriched uranium, and the fact that they have achieved a certain level of dependability with these weapons means that any attack on their facilities could precipitate a launch where at least a few of their missiles would get through to devastate some cities.
What makes this analysis so troubling is that Lewis used to analyze the progress of rogue-regime nuclear programs for a living and was an expert at reading between the lines of intelligence assessments and other data to find what others may have missed.The fact that North Korea’s nuclear weapons used less fissile material than we expected helps explain the second judgment that North Korea has more bombs than is usually reported. The defector claimed that North Korea’s first nuclear weapon contained only 4 kilograms of the limited supply of plutonium North Korea made, and continues to make, at its reactor at Yongbyon. (For a long while, experts claimed the reactor was not operating when thermal images plainly showed that it was.) The North Koreans themselves claimed the first test used only 2 kilograms of plutonium. Those claims struck many people, including me, as implausible at first. But they were only implausible in the sense that such a device would probably fail when tested — and the first North Korean test did fail. The problem is North Korea kept trying, and its later tests succeeded.
We also must take seriously that North Korea has perhaps stretched its supply of plutonium by integrating some high-enriched uranium into each bomb and developing all-uranium designs. North Korea has an unknown capacity to make highly enriched uranium. We’ve long noticed that the single facility that North Korea has shown off to outsiders seems smaller than North Korea’s newly renovated capacity to mine and mill uranium; we naturally wondered where all that extra uranium is going.The bottom line is that our options are limited and entirely unsatisfactory:Unless the intelligence community knows exactly where North Korea is enriching uranium and how big each facility is, we’re just guessing how many nuclear weapons the country may have. But 60 nuclear weapons doesn’t sound absurdly high.
The thing is, we knew all this already. Sure, sure it isn’t the same when I say it. I mean, I am just some rando living out in California. But now that someone with a tie and real job in Washington has said it, it is news.
The big question is where to go from here. Some of my colleagues still think the United States might persuade North Korea to abandon, or at least freeze, its nuclear and missile programs. I am not so sure. I suspect we might have to settle for trying to reduce tensions so that we live long enough to figure this problem out. But there is only one way to figure out who is right: Talk to the North Koreans.
The other options are basically terrible. There is no credible military option. North Korea has some unknown number of nuclear-armed missiles, maybe 60, including ones that can reach the United States; do you really think U.S. strikes could get all of them? That not a single one would survive to land on Seoul, Tokyo, or New York? Or that U.S. missile defenses would work better than designed, intercepting not most of the missiles aimed at the United States, but every last one of them? Are you willing to be your life on that?
On a good day, maybe we get most of the missiles. We save most of the cities, like Seoul and New York, but lose a few like Tokyo. Two out three ain’t bad, right?As Deb Heine points out, the Obama administration knew most of this as far back s 2013. And, of course, the major enabler of the North Korean nuclear program, the Clinton administration, knew how determined Kim was to create a nuclear deterrent even to the point of starving his people to get the bomb. Neither president did anything to stop them when it was possible to do so.
We can't possibly know what our intelligence agencies know about the location and number of weapons in North Korea. But even if Lewis's estimate of 60 is off by 50%, that's still a lot of missiles to get before they launch.
What Lewis doesn't explain is why Kim would risk the annihilation of his country by employing a Götterdämmerung strategy -- launching his missiles at the first sign of a U.S. attack. There are other factors to consider, including the internal politics of North Korea. The Kim regime has no illusions about the consequences of launching nuclear missiles at America or her allies. Given Kim's less-than-solid hold on power, it's possible to imagine a military coup or a coup involving another faction in the inner circle that would stop a suicidal move to strike the U.S.
Still, the military option for Donald Trump cannot be taken off the table. To paraphrase Senator McCain, who commented on a possible attack to take out Iran's nuclear program:
There's only one thing worse than military action. That is a nuclear-armed North Korea.
--------------- Rick Moran is PJ Media's Chicago editor and Blog editor at The American Thinker. Tags:North Korea, Rick Moran, PJMedia To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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