Just as it was reported that the summit between the United States and North Korea was back on and that Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea was on his way to New York to meet with officials in preparation for the June 12 summit, the CIA leaked an intelligence assessment concluding that “North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons any time soon.” The timing of this leak is striking, as it seems to be an effort to undermine negotiations between the two nations and comes just days after ranking members of the Democratic Party and Republican hardliners attacked President Donald Trump over his efforts to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
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WNU Editor: When I read this leaked CIA report to NBC yesterday my alarm bells started ringing .... CIA report says North Korea won't denuclearize, but might open a burger joint (NBC). Why leak it now .... on the eve of talks between US Secretary of State Pompeo and high-ranking North Korean official Kim Yong Chol? We all know that there has been a problem between President Trump and some in the intelligence community since he was elected. It looks like those problems are still there.
8 comments:
If given a hard choice, trust team Trump or the CIA, I am going to trust team Trump. Perhaps this is in error but, given the numerous errors the CIA and US intelligence have made over the years I don't consider them a trustworthy trust. At this point, team Trump is unknown.
If there is a Summit meeting, their will be photos of the two men. In theory, such photos could circulate for decades. Having such photos gives president Trump legitimacy. This makes the idea of such a summit dangerous for North Korea and why they have resisted this for decades. Neither they nor their allies have wanted to afford any legitimacy to the American position or to America in general.
Given the effort of the so called deep state to undermine Trump and to ultimately remove him from office, a Summit accompanied by video, audio, and photographs gives him a degree of legitimacy. Given their goals, this becomes problematic. As such, why leak this now? I think you have your answer.
Given the numerous errors of US intelligence, Iraq, 911, Afghanistan, just to name a few, I tend not to take them seriously. They may be reliable as a third hand source to corroborate first and hand and second hand sources. Beyond this I would not rely on them.
There also may be some nefariousness in what they are doing as well. After all it does appear that they did act to undermine a very careful and meticulous diplomatic effort with regards to Russia and exacerbated Cold War 2. As such, it may not be entirely out of character for them to undermine a diplomatic effort with North Korea.
Lets hope this effort succeeds. After decades of war the United States needs peace.
What I meant is lets hope the effort at peace succeeds. After decades of war the United States needs peace.
#Resistance from the politicized CIA that John Brennan created.
Don't forget the #Resistance were perfectly willing to destroy US-Russian relations to cover up their criminal conduct against the Trump campaign. Destroying a summit is in their playbook.
Anonymous,
I would not materially disagree with that. A number of commentators have pointed this out. Essentially these people went out of their way to exacerbate and perhaps even start a new Cold War with a nuclear armed power who possesses one of the world's top conventional and cyber military capabilities in the world and for no good reason other than to cover up their actions and/or because they are petty losers who lost an election to a superior candidate who ran a superior campaign and had a superior message to them.
When HRC began circulating the myth of Russian interference I likened her to a child playing with matches under the bed. Such a person is either pathological insane or they have the mind of petulant child. Either way neither they nor their advisors can be trusted with positions of power. As far as who to vote for, we could have stopped right there frankly.
CIA assessment is reasonable and accurate. KJU has realized a program his father and grand father worked on for decades. Even he did agree it would take 10-15 years to verify and remove all the material and infrastructure that has been built over those decades.
Short of some Trump jedi mind trick, Kim isn't de-nuking. You'd have to be a rube or delusional or both to believe otherwise. Sadly for them, a lot of Trump supporters are both. But, yeah, sure, the blame Obama card is always there to play. It absolves the clowns in this administration of any responsibility.
B. "Given the numerous errors of US intelligence, Iraq, 911, Afghanistan" sometime errors are better defined as stratagems.
Anon,
If offered the right incentives, Kim and NK might de-nuke. At some point, we will have to make some concessions. Part of the problem is their are going to be trust issues in dealing with a US government. As an "outsider" and someone who has substantial contacts within both Russia and China, NK is going to be more likely to trust team Trump than they likely would anyone else. Then there is the problem of what happens after he and his team leave office. So we aren't at the point where Kim would de-nuke but I would not dismiss this possibility. Furthermore, given CIA's track record, to blithely state their assessment is "reasonable and accurate" seems an act of blind faith.
If the current process fails, I see two basic options. 1.)South Korea develops its own nuclear deterrent to counter North Korea. This would take some of the pressure off of the US military and would likely improve relations between America and South Korea. 2.)Cut South Korea loose entirely. At this point, negotiate an end to our involvement in the Korean war with North Korea completely separate from South Korea. Once freed of that yoke, we become much more flexible in how we can deal with North Korea making a negotiated end to the conflict far easier.
Please note I did not "blame Obama" for this. The problem has been ongoing for many decades. Now hopefully the current leadership can solve it. From almost being at war less than a year ago to being where we are now is an amazing turnaround. The only new variable to any of this is president Trump. As such, while the analysis could be in error and there is still much that can go wrong, I tend to credit Trump diplomacy as the primary reason for the turnaround.
Bob,
A "stratagem" is defined as an attempt to mislead. Very respectfully US officials typically aren't bright enough to pull off such a thing, there's little upside potential relative to the risks, and the propensity of US officials to "leak" information makes this very unlikely even if we assume US officials are generally brighter than they seem. Furthermore extraordinary proof would be needed for such things which has not ben supplied.
After 911 and again after the Iraq debacle I suggested that US (un)intelligence be treated like a cancer. With certain blood cancers the only way to cure them is to complete purge the patient's bone marrow, insert new bone marrow from a donor, and essentially start completely over. This is how I suggested we should deal with US (un)intelligence. Essentially completely purge the system, start over, and utilize the services of allies such as the UK. France, Germany, and Israel to name a few to assist us in building competent intelligence services. As such, whether they did this by strategy, which I tend to dismiss for the reasons above, or incompetence which seems more likely the problems still gets solved.
Team Trump has largely been successful in areas such as this effort, thus far at least, and in getting things like tax cuts and much needed regulatory reforms through when he has bypassed traditional lines of governance.
Now if the CIA had such concerns it would have made much more sense to discuss them in private with POTUS and his team rather than run to the media and risk undermining a very careful diplomatic process that has taken many months to put together. They've done it before. Whose to say they won't do it again. With that said team Trump may not even give them the time of day even if they did request such a meeting. After all by now he probably knows that he is dealing with a group of incompetent boobs and political hacks.
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