Pentagon, Washington. In developments that will have conspiracy theorists busy for decades, it has emerged that the planning for North Korean regime change has been in the works for months, with US troop and ship movements put in motion months before this weeks nuclear confrontation.
President Donald Trump boasted early last week that he had sent an “armada” as a warning to North Korea, the aircraft carrier strike group he spoke of was still far from the Korean peninsula, and headed in the opposite direction.
The US military’s Pacific Command explained on Tuesday that the strike group first had to complete a shorter than planned period of training with Australia. But it was now “proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered,” it said.
The perceived communications mix-up has raised eyebrows among North Korean experts, who wonder whether it erodes the Trump administration’s credibility at a time when US rhetoric about the North’s advancing nuclear and missile capabilities are raising concerns about a potential conflict.
“If you threaten them and your threat is not credible, it’s only going to undermine whatever your policy toward them is. And that could be a logical conclusion from what’s just happened,” said one North Korea expert.
The U.S. military initially said in a statement dated April 10 that Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of Pacific Command, directed the Carl Vinson strike group “to sail north and report on station in the Western Pacific.”
Defence Secretary Jim Mattis initially appeared to play down the deployment on April 11, saying the Vinson was “just on her way up there because that’s where we thought it was most prudent to have her at this time.”
“There’s not a specific demand signal or specific reason why we’re sending her up there,” he said.But even Mattis initially misspoke about the strike group’s itinerary, telling a news conference that the Vinson had pulled out of an exercise with Australia.
Even of more troubling concern, is noe of these forces movements are secret. China, Russia, and even North Korea have satellite access to know the location of the American threat.
Which simply reinforces the theory that US command and control is not very well organized or at least that is the message they want in North Korean coalition forces as the US pretends to be the drunk guy who can not find his way home, while dragging a US Navy battle group behind him.