THE DEAL WITH NORTH KOREA COULD TAKE DECADES TO COMPLETE, IF EVER

…This is what North Korea still has in their arsenal.

The “Singapore Summit” settled nothing.

Well, the country has received what they voted for.  They have a president that says he can read our adversary’s minds.

We have a president that even though North Korea has successfully tested 5 nuclear bombs; even though they still have over 60 nuclear war heads; even though they still have their medium range and ICBM missiles; even though they have reportedly hundreds of tunnels where their portable missiles are hidden: but according to our fearless leader, “North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat or a rogue regime, or our country’s biggest enemy.”

In tweets that began as Air Force One landed back in the states, Trump declared that North Korea is “no longer” a nuclear threat and he then branded the mainstream American media as, “Our country’s biggest enemy.”

As expected, upon returning to Washington from Singapore, President Trump amped up his bogus claims of a highly successful summit with the North Korean leader.  This was as both the Democrats, and even a number of Republicans, were increasingly skeptical about what Trump was declaring as being accomplished in Singapore.

Trump, who has touted what he said was serious trust that was built with the North Korean leader in just a few hours.  Trump cast his meeting as a real game-changer that had already dramatically reduced the possibility of a military conflict.  Yes, the same regime that duped two former US presidents and their administrations.  In just a few hours, Donald Trump found his BFF.  Unfortunately, for the president, that could either mean “Best Friend Forever”, or it could mean “Big, Fat, F_ _K”.

This was Trumps tweet when he landed: “Just landed, a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”   In another tweet, Trump said that North Korea is no longer the United States’ most dangerous problem, as President Barack Obama had characterized upon leaving office, and Trump said Americans could “sleep well tonight!”

Trump’s rosy assessment was ridiculed by Democratic lawmakers and some analysts, who suggested that North Korea obviously still remains a serious threat.

“What planet is the president on?” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) said during remarks on the Senate floor. “Saying it, doesn’t make it so. North Korea still has nuclear weapons. It still has ICBMs. It still has the United States in danger. Somehow President Trump thinks when he says something, it becomes reality, if it were only that easy, only that simple.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), meanwhile, said on Twitter that Trump was being “truly delusional,” noting that North Korea has “the same arsenal today as 48 hours ago.”

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) also mocked Trump, saying on Twitter: “One trip and it’s ‘Mission Accomplished,’ Mr. President?”  (We all know what happened when George W. Bush spoke those immortal words.)

“North Korea is a real and present threat,” Schiff said. “So is a dangerously naive president.”

Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said “the summit changed nothing.  Worse yet, overselling the summit makes it harder to keep sanctions in place, further reducing pressure on NK to reduce (much less give up) its nuclear weapons and missiles,” Haass said on Twitter.

The brief document signed by Trump and Kim provided no detail beyond the stale commitment to “denuclearize,” a promise that doesn’t mean the same to both parties and a statement that Pyongyang has made before and ignored many times. There is no formal timetable or listed catalog of that nation’s nuclear weapons.  But after just a few hours with “Little Rocket Man”, Trump repeatedly said he trusts Kim to follow through on his promise.  Something that has never happened before.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) said that he is “encouraged” by continued negotiations on denuclearization, now being led Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. At the same time, he said, there is no question that North Korea is a “terrible regime” and “we should be under no delusions that this will be fast.”

Some Republicans sounded more skeptical of talks with North Korea bearing fruit.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said it’s understandable for Trump to be optimistic because “he’s the guy negotiating.  He needs to make the other side feel like he’s serious about getting something done,” Rubio said. “But for the rest of us who are watching and know the history of North Korea [and Donald Trump], we should be skeptical. This is a country that’s made promises before and has broken them.”

Trump also defended a major concession made to North Korea while he was in Singapore: that the United States would halt joint military exercises with South Korean forces on the Korean Peninsula.

“We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith — which both sides are!” the president wrote during his series of tweets.

But the reality is that South Korea and Japan pay for ½ of the cost of the exercises.  In addition, the exercises are defensive in nature and they are a level of training that needs to be continued until that “de-nuking” is completed.  Experts have said that de-nuking North Korea could take more than 15 years, and NK would need to identify all of their hidden missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s).  Is that really going to happen?

Appearing on Fox News, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway was amongst the Trump supporters that his efforts on North Korea would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

“Look, the last president was handed the Nobel Peace Prize, and this president’s actually going to earn it and that’s all we need to know from this,” Conway said.  Obama had won the prize in 2009 for his efforts to strengthen international diplomacy.

Even as they offered measured praise for Trump’s diplomatic efforts, congressional Republicans have emphasized the difficult road that remains.  They also pressed for more details of what exactly the president had actually agreed to with Kim.  (Other than a vague statement from Kim, nothing has changed.)

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said Tuesday that he wants Pompeo to brief senators on the substance of what the two nations discussed, including the status of the US troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula.  Will they remain there?

Trump, who frequently spars with the media, was also strong in his criticism of television coverage of the summit, pointing out two networks for scorn.  He did it again as another hit for his loyal base of supporters.

“So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN,” he said on Twitter. “They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea. 500 days ago they would have ‘begged’ for this deal-it looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!”

He is so full of horse manure.

Future talks with NK are to be led on the US side by the Sec. of State, Pompeo and, according to the agreement, a “relevant, high-­level” North Korean official.  But no specifics of a future path were outlined. There was no mention of a declaration of North Korea’s nuclear assets, which normally precedes any arms-control negotiations, or of timelines or deadlines.

As usual with President Trump, he doesn’t deal with the details.  Donald Trump was the idiot that took the issue with NK to a potential point of nuclear war.  Now he’s saying that it was his driving force for bringing this to a peaceful potential, even though that potential is still a “pig-in-a poke” with no agreed details.

It will be interesting to see how this one eventually finishes.

But that probably won’t be in my lifetime.

Copyright G.Ater  2018