KISS YOUR ALASKA GOODBYE
Crazy Kim’s US threat :
North Korea yesterday launched this intercontinental ballistic missile, which had the potential to reach Alaska with a nuclear payload. Kim Jong-un gloated, “American bastards would be not very happy with this gift on July 4.”
North Korea successfully testfired an intercontinental ballistic missile that had the potential to deliver a nuclear warhead to Alaska, officials confirmed Tuesday — an alarming escalation of tensions between the United States and the rogue regime.
In characteristically heated rhetoric, North Korea’s Academy of Defense Science said the test of the ICBM — the Hwasong-14 — marked the “final step” in creating a “confident and powerful nuclear state that can strike anywhere on Earth.”
Dictator Kim Jong-un later taunted the US.
“American bastards would be not very happy with this gift sent on the July 4 anniversary,” a North Korean news agency quoted him as saying.
Washington and Seoul responded Tuesday night by holding a joint weapons drill, with each country firing missiles into South Korean territorial waters on the east coast.
The exercise was conducted “to show our precision fire capability” and to counter North Korea’s “destabilizing and unlawful actions,” the US Army said in a statement.
And President Trump also called for an emergency, closed-door meeting of the 15-member United Nations Security Council.
The session will convene Wednesday afternoon, said a spokesman for Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN.
The North Korean missile was launched early Tuesday near an airfield in Panghyon, 60 miles northwest of Pyongyang, the capital, and landed in the Sea of Japan inside Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
The US military estimated that it flew for about 37 minutes and reached an altitude of more than 1,700 miles, which would be longer and higher than any known North Korean missile.
It covered a distance of about 578 miles — but has the potential to travel 4,160 miles, which means it could hit Alaska, about 3,550 miles from the dictatorship.
“The test launch was conducted at the sharpest angle possible and did not have any negative effect on neighboring countries,” North Korea’s state media reported.
If the trajectory were flattened to achieve distance instead of height, it could have hit Alaska.
Trump condemned Kim in two tweets while it was still Monday night in the US.
“Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea, ” Trump tweeted at 10:19 p.m., before finishing his sentence in a tweet five minutes later: “and Japan will put up with this much longer.”
Trump urged North Korea’s biggest ally, China, to “put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!”
But critics said a tougher and more serious response was needed.
“As the threat increases, we must bring greater pressure to bear on North Korea, and its international patrons, China and Russia,” said Sen. Deb Fischer (RNeb.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. “But we should have no illusions that they will solve this problem for us.”
Top US security, military and diplomatic officials huddled in an unexpected Fourth of July meeting to discuss Washington’s options.
Trump, after a round of golf at his club in Sterling, Va., returned to DC Tuesday afternoon.
Administration officials were expected to recommend that he approve a “measured response” that would include sending more US troops, ships and aircraft to the region, CNN reported.
The Pentagon would also ensure that anti-missile systems on Navy ships in the western Pacific and land-based missiles in Alaska are ready.