nuclear weapons

This was entirely predictable: Trump cancels Korea Summit

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Back in March South Korean officials briefed President Trump on their recent visit to Pyongyang, where the North Korean leader expressed a willingness to discuss nuclear disarmament with the U.S. and said he would suspend all nuclear and missile tests during the dialogue.

Trump impulsively agreed to a summit with the man he had derided as “Little Rocket Man” in his Twitter rants, without any strategic plan or even an ask for North Korea. By doing so he did what no other president had ever done before: he gave legitimacy to the murderous dictatorship of Kim Jong Un and elevated North Korea to equal footing with the United States as a nuclear power on the world stage.

Trump started praising Kim Jong Un as “honorable” and even canceled a B-52 bomber training exercise with South Korea after the South Korean government expressed concerns that it could generate tensions before the summit. The White House even minted a Commemorative ‘Peace Talks’ Coin Ahead of the Trump-Kim Summit.

Then all of this suddenly changed today when Trump just as impulsively canceled the Korea summit that he had so impulsively agreed to in March. This was entirely predictable. It was never going to happen.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post explains What really led to Trump’s North Korea faceplant:

Looks like President Trump may have to wait for that Nobel Peace Prize he has been hoping for:

President Trump on Thursday canceled a planned summit next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the rogue nation in a letter explaining his abrupt decision.

“I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump said to Kim in a letter released by the White House on Thursday morning.

This is what we call “cutting your losses.” We’ve had reports in recent days that Trump was having second thoughts about the summit after learning, to his shock and dismay, that the North Koreans were not eager to simply give up all their nuclear weapons right away. So it appears that after a couple of weeks in which he and his administration seemed to be trying everything they could think of to sabotage any chance for an agreement, Trump decided that canceling the summit now was preferable to holding the summit and coming away with nothing after raising expectations so extraordinarily high.

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Trump violates the Iran Nuclear Deal in pursuit of another ‘stupid war’ with Iran

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“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” – Attributed to Mark Twain

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did his best reprisal of Secretary of State Colin Powell before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, citing old intelligence conflated into a current threat in making the U.S. case for war with Iraq. Powell Blames Himself, Others For Specious Iraq WMD Claims to U.N.: “A failure will always be attached to me and my U.N. presentation,” Powell writes in “It Worked For Me,” a book that provides leadership advice. “I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem. My instincts failed me.”

Benjamin Netanyahu will not be so introspective in making his case to President Donald Trump to undermine the Iran Deal, and to set the stage for a war with Iran, something this Neocon war monger has long desired.

President Trump today cited Netanyahu’s presentation in announcing that the U.S. will violate the Iran Deal by withdrawing from the agreement and reimposing nuclear sanctions on Iran. Read Trump’s Speech Withdrawing From the Iran Deal:

At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear-energy program. Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie. Last week, Israel published intelligence documents, long-concealed by Iran, conclusively showing the Iranian regime and its history of pursuing nuclear weapons.

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We have seen this play before: Neocons want to get their war on with Iran

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President Trump’s selection of the Neocon “godfather” of the Iraq War and Islamophobe John Bolton as his National Security advisor, Trump betrays his supporters with John Bolton pick, signaling more ‘stupid wars’, and fellow Islamophobe Mike Pompeo narrowly confirmed as Secretary of State last week, Pompeo as secretary of state makes Mideast war more likely, makes recertification of the Iran Nuclear Deal on or before the May 12 deadline unlikely, despite pleas from the other major powers to the agreement for the U.S. to honor its commitment to the Iran Nuclear Deal. U.S. allies press Trump to keep Iran nuclear deal alive:

Western allies stepped up pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump to keep alive an international nuclear deal with Iran,

Trump has said that unless European allies fix what he has called its “terrible flaws” by May 12, he will restore U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, which would be a severe blow to the pact.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who was in the U.S. last week for a state visit and addressed a joint session of Congress (video), emphasized there was no “Plan B” for keeping a lid on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

And then there is this old Neocon war monger who, like Trump, is the subject of a criminal investigation by his attorney general’s office, who would welcome the distraction and nationalistic unifying effect of yet another Mideast war:

Trump’s opposition to the deal has been welcomed by Israel, which has rejected the pact since it was being hammered out under former U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

“Israel will not allow regimes that seek our annihilation to acquire nuclear weapons. This is why we opposed so resolutely the Iran deal, because it gives Iran a clear path to a nuclear arsenal,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech to foreign diplomats on Monday in Jerusalem.

Listing objections, Netanyahu added, “This is why this deal has to be either fully fixed or fully nixed.”

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‘It’s déjà vu all over again’ on North Korea

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“It’s déjà vu all over again.” – Yogi Berra

The headline at POLITICO reads As Korean leaders make history, Trump stands ready to take credit:

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A dramatic Friday meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea is stoking optimism that President Donald Trump might strike a historic nuclear deal with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un — leading skeptics to worry that expectations are growing dangerously high.

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Trump sycophants in the personality cult of Trump are already spiking the ball before having scored in the end zone, saying that Trump – rather than the leaders of North and South Korea – should get a Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump himself wasn’t talking about peace prizes on Friday. But as remarkable images emerged of the bellicose Kim stepping for the first time across his country’s border with South Korea, the president’s excitement — and desire for credit — was plain to see.

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However stirring the images of Kim’s visit to south were, the resulting talks between the Koreas produced few specifics and left open numerous crucial questions, including whether and how the Korean War — which halted in 1953 without a formal peace treaty — might be ended.

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The threat of nuclear war should not rest in the hands of Donald Trump

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Our always insecure man-child Twitter-troll-in-chief really outdid himself over the New Year’s weekend, but he saved his most insane tweets for Tuesday when he was supposedly back at work (he was actually watching Fox & Friends). Fact-checking President Trump’s post-New Year’s tweets.

This is why for foreign leaders and diplomats around the world taking the measure of our man-child Twitter-troll-in-chief, “The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’” Donald Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously.

The tweet that put the world on edge on Tuesday was President Trump’s threat of nuclear war with North Korea using the taunt of a man insecure in his own manhood. Trump Says His ‘Nuclear Button’ Is ‘Much Bigger’ Than North Korea’s:

President Trump again raised the prospect of nuclear war with North Korea, boasting in strikingly playground terms on Tuesday night that he commands a “much bigger” and “more powerful” arsenal of devastating weapons than the outlier government in Asia.

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Yeah, For Starters, There’s No Button. More importantly, a nuclear war may hinge on our always insecure man-child Twitter-troll-in-chief’s freudian insistence that “my missile is bigger than yours.”

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Mr. Trump’s combative response to a statement made the day before by Mr. Kim raised the temperature in the brewing confrontation between the United States and North Korea even as American allies in South Korea were moving to open talks with Pyongyang. The contrast between Mr. Trump’s language and the peace overture by South Korea highlighted the growing rift between two longtime allies.

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