They were ferried from the Capitol by bus.
Advertisement
Several senators who attended said the president discussed issues they were already aware of from the press.
As tensions build in the Korean Peninsula, all USA senators were invited to the White House Wednesday for a briefing. In this Monday, April 24, 2017 photo released by the U.S. Navy, the Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Michigan arrives in Busan, South Korea, for a scheduled port visi.
Sen. Ben Cardin is the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Seoul says North Korea conducted huge live-fire drills Tuesday.
China and Russian Federation have vowed “to take further action” against the United States’ ambition to build a global anti-missile shield that they argue will give USA forces a unilateral military advantage.
But sanctions will be the greatest tool at the Trump administration’s disposal.
United States lawmakers have been seeking a clear White House strategy following repeated North Korean missile tests and fears it could conduct a sixth nuclear bomb test.
Existing North Korean missiles are grossly inaccurate by US standards.
Admiral Harry Harris, the commander in charge of United States forces in South Korea has warned that if left unchecked, North Korea’s capabilities will soon match its rhetoric. China in January suspended coal imports from the North for the rest of the year, but it did so following the passage of a Security Council resolution capping Pyongyang’s coal exports.
The deployment of THAAD had recently hurt Seoul’s relationship with Beijing, which regards THAAD’s powerful radar as a security and surveillance threat.
In a similarly prudent report, McClatchy is stating that according to the top USA military officer in the Pacific, the Pentagon needs to consider deploying new anti-ballistic missile systems and a defensive radar to Hawaii to protect against a growing threat from North Korea. “I have suggested that we consider putting interceptors in Hawaii that. defend (it) directly, and that we look at a defensive Hawaii radar”.
Since the briefing was classified, we don’t know exactly what Trump and his top officials told the assembled senators.
Large components of the U.S. THAAD system began landing in South Korea early last month, under an agreement that was reached last July. There are ongoing plans to increase the number of interceptors in Alaska.
Several days later, Vice President Mike Pence stood on the deck of aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan docked in Japan and warned North Korea not to “test” the Trump administration.
China on Thursday welcomed an apparently softer tone by the United States on the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis but stressed its opposition to a USA missile defense system being deployed in South Korea.
At a House Armed Services Committee, Harris rejected reports that the Carl Vinson group is vulnerable to North Korean attacks. That was a reference to USA and South Korean war games.
USA troops began delivering a missile defence system that has infuriated China to a deployment site in South Korea Wednesday, amid heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear ambitions. Sanctions haven’t forced Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear efforts, but a targeted USA attack to take out its weapons program risks a wider war along a heavily militarized border near where tens of millions of South Koreans live.
Leahy describes the Administration’s approach to North Korea as little more than “saber rattling” and he thinks it has little chance of being successful.
On Tuesday, North Korea conducted live-fire drills near the east coast city of Wonsan that involved 300 to 400 artillery pieces, Yonhap reported.
COMING TOGETHER The U.S. remains on guard. It’s telling that the Kim regime has not conducted its long-expected nuclear test – yet, anyway – and they may be looking for a way to get bought out of it.
Advertisement
Harris noted “a mismatch” between North Korea’s long range missile and nuclear capabilities and Kim Jong Un’s threatening rhetoric towards other countries in the region and the United States.
