Patterico's Pontifications

8/9/2017

Report: Trump “Pissed” That Kelly Tried To Control His Twitter Account

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:00 am



Washington Examiner:

But while the president has offered Kelly a level of control Priebus never managed to obtain, Trump has resisted giving his new chief of staff veto power over the spontaneous and provocative tweets that often serve as a distraction for his administration.

A series of news reports suggesting Kelly had sought oversight of Trump’s Twitter account, including a report that claimed Kelly wanted to know in advance what the president planned to post, made their way to Trump’s desk last week, a person familiar with the situation told the Washington Examiner.

Trump “was pissed when he read Kelly wanted to control his Twitter feed,” the person said.

Stories about palace intrigue based on anonymous sources are suspect right out of the gate. But they do provide data points with which to analyze the nature of the warring factions. This story takes care to note that Kelly was authorized to fire anyone except “Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway, and chief strategist Steve Bannon.” It’s not unreasonable to assume that the source is connected to one of those three camps, and using this leak to push back at Kelly’s restriction of their access to Trump.

In any event, if Kelly isn’t trying to control Trump’s Twitter usage, I’d be surprised — just as I’d be surprised if Trump didn’t resist such a move. As I have noted previously, it’s not a good look to be endlessly tweeting like a jackass about issues of personal pique, while the American people continue to suffer from your stalled legislative agenda. But Trump doesn’t seem to care about any of that.

In the end, the notion that Kelly is going to bring discipline to Trump is fanciful. We all knew it, but I guess it makes for a cute little side drama.

Ah, well. Maybe Kelly can at least help stop Trump from talking us into nuclear war. If he can perform even that one small service, maybe the change will have been worth it.

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]

59 Responses to “Report: Trump “Pissed” That Kelly Tried To Control His Twitter Account”

  1. Don’t see this as a big deal if true. Twitter is a pure waste if time and a narcissist’s dream.

    NJRob (bcf15e)

  2. What next? Someone reporting that Trump did not care for how the White House chef made his eggs this morning?

    SPQR (240837)

  3. Kelly is WH Chief-of-Staff, he’s there to serve the President, not to control him or to limit his ability to communicate. If Kelly can’t do his job without infringing on the President’s exclusive prerogatives, then he’s overstepping his bounds and needs to read his job description again.

    ropelight (072508)

  4. The daily caller piece about who had been leaking is more interesting.

    Ot I was surprised to see that new Stephenson tome was not in the stores yet.

    narciso (d1f714)

  5. I hope Kelly will stop NK from taking us into nuclear war.

    Q! bert (fc6e7d)

  6. #6, Goofy Q, you’ve got your account in the wrong bank if you think Kelly can stop the fat Korean t*rd from committing a Jim Jones style atrocity on a national scale.

    If the porcine Nork dictator is determined to commit national suicide by Uncle Sam there’s little Kelly can do about it.

    Salvation for the North Korean people is in the hands of China and Nork military leadership. Unless responsible adults take control and defuse the conflict, it’s a crap shoot the rogue nation survives to see the new year.

    ropelight (072508)

  7. #7, please read the last paragraph of Patterico’s post and see if you meant to say “sarcastic Q” instead of goofy.

    Q! bert (fc6e7d)

  8. Six days ago, the New York Times had: (online Aug 3 – page 1 August 4, 2017 paper)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/us/politics/john-kelly-chief-of-staff-trump.html

    Mr. Kelly, 67, has told his new employees that he was hired to manage the staff, not the president. He will not try to change Mr. Trump’s Twitter or TV-watching habits. But he has also said he wants to closely monitor the information the president consumes, quickly counter dubious news stories with verified facts, and limit the posse of people urging Mr. Trump to tweet something they feel passionately about.

    He has privately acknowledged that he cannot control the president and that his authority would be undermined if he tried and failed…

    Now, right after that, at 8:15 pm August 4, 2017 we have this Washington Examiner article, which says that while Kelly cannot control what the president posts, he would like him to avoid announcing big policy decisions on Twitter.

    This would seem to have been provoked by the transgender ban in the military, which so far, is not official. The cause could also include what haoeopned with his own appointment, which was announced on Twitter.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  9. @ropelight, #3:

    …[Kelly]’s there to serve the President, not to…limit his ability to communicate.

    You speak as if the one excludes the other.

    I don’t know whether there’s anything to this story. I don’t care whether there is or not. But if there is, then in all probability nothing will happen right away — or in the near future, for that matter. Trump cannot possibly afford to fire John Kelly right after losing Spicer and Priebus and Scaramucci…and right after publicly praising Kelly for having done a bang-up job during his six months at Homeland Security. He needs Kelly more than Kelly needs him, if only to give the public a sense that the White House has finally stabilized a bit after a period of turmoil. The most he’ll do is stew over it.

    I also assume that Kelly, having been a smart enough politician and a capable enough officer to get his fourth star, understands that this sort of protection only lasts so long, and won’t make a habit of doing things that will piss off a boss who has the ability to dismiss him at will.

    Demosthenes (09f714)

  10. https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnhudson/trump-hasnt-appointed-an-ambassador-to-korea-and-now-its-a?utm_term=.ctpkka8PE#.gpA33gayv

    Not that any of this matters. The pot stirrers have the Con, and Chuckles has his stage antics. It’s all good in the conservative ‘hood.

    Ben burn (02b525)

  11. Who’s Next? – Tom Lehrer (w/a hiccup)

    First we got the bomb and that was good
    Cause we love peace and motherhood
    Then Russia got the bomb, but that’s O.K
    Cause the balance of power’s maintained that way!
    Who’s next?

    France got the bomb, but don’t you grieve
    ‘Cause they’re on our side, I believe
    China got the bomb, but have no fears
    They can’t wipe us out for at least five years!
    Who’s next?

    Then Indonesia claimed that they
    Were gonna get one any day
    South Africa wants two, that’s right:
    One for the black and one for the white!
    Who’s next?

    Egypt’s gonna get one, too
    Just to use on you know who
    So Israel’s getting tense
    Wants one in self defense
    “The Lord’s our shepherd”, says the Psalm
    But just in case, we better get a bomb!
    Who’s next?

    Luxembourg is next to go
    And, who knows, maybe Monaco
    We’ll try to stay serene and calm
    When North Korea gets the bomb!
    Who’s next, who’s next, who’s next?
    Who’s next?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdtAFIl2jhc

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  12. “cute little side drama.”

    What’s the bottom line?

    I note the Pentagon told Eric in no uncertain terms he can’t have Afghanistan, Bannon or no Bannon.

    The blowback from his tweets seem to last a few minutes, but old soldiers don’t forget. His bridge- burning will be his undoing. So many,many enemies too great to count.

    Ben burn (02b525)

  13. Re the Norwegian blue thread, as flake is only one up this year:

    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/09/trump-jeff-flake-robert-mercer-kelli-ward-241454

    narciso (d1f714)

  14. This story is a little like the kinsman fake covers, that hid their success full oprration

    narciso (d1f714)

  15. I think Tim Lehrer forgot Britain, which was third, and his projections from when he wrote that (circa 1965?) are alll wrong.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  16. Trump made his bones tweeting directly to the voters and circumventing the national propaganda agencies. He ain’t about to put his administration’s future in the corrupt hands of hate mongers and socialist pukes.

    Letting Trump be Trump means backing him up, not trying to shut him down. Our Republic dies when our President can be silenced by fools.

    ropelight (072508)

  17. “President Trump was informed of the growing threat last December and on taking office his first orders to me emphasized the readiness of our ballistic missile defense and nuclear deterrent forces.”

    ~ U.S. Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis

    https://twitter.com/amanda_m_macias/status/895325176501460993

    “…his first orders…”

    More evidence for you to toss in your word salad maker, Q!.

    Tough day for you.

    Q! bert (fc6e7d)

  18. I have made a mistake and I did not intend to post to Q! here. I will post on the correct string. Much apologies.

    Q! bert (fc6e7d)

  19. Trump is used to bean- counters with a overbite who not only don’t bark but have no bite. I can see Kelly as a DI….

    “”Who the f*ck said that? Who’s the slimy little communist sh*t twinkle toes co*k sucker who just signed his own death warrant?”

    Ben burn (02b525)

  20. “…his first orders…”

    German chocolate cake with two scoops of vanilla.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  21. Patterico,

    Trump is not “taking us into nuclear war.” If we get there it will be the fault (in increasing order) of Bill Clinton, W, and Barack Obama. They each, in turn, decided that proliferation of nuclear weapons, and particularly proliferation into the hands of people who make Trump seem sane, was better than taking a risk. And the risk grew. Now, it intolerable, there is no more road to kick the can down, and there are only two options:

    1. Allow the Kims to have nuclear weapons and ICBMs and use them to blackmail the world.
    2. Go to war.

    Option number 3, that you can achieve an agreement with an actor who has repeatedly breach every agreement you’ve made, including his original promise never to seek nuclear weapons, isn’t real. It’s for people who want to fool themselves yet again that “this time will be different.”

    And if the Kims are allowed to keep these weapons, and secure their slave state, it signals to all that the way to security is nuclear weapons. And that path eventually leads to the Last War. Just not today.

    If, on the other hand, the Kims are stopped, the price will be paid once and the signal instead is that seeking nuclear weapons is a foolish move. That path eventually leads to nuclear disarmament.

    I know which world I want to see, even if getting there is painful.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  22. From the start of John Varley’s “Demon” (a book mostly about something else)

    It was common knowledge that World War V started in a defective twenty-cent Molecular Circuit Matrix in a newly-installed firecontrol computer four miles below Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming.

    An investigation eventually led to the apartment of Jacob Smith, thirty-eight, of 3400 Temple, Salt Lake City. Smith had tested the MCM and allowed it to be installed in Western Bioelectric’s Mark XX “Archangel” Brain Array. The Archangel had then replaced the aging Mark Nineteen in defense of the New Reformed Latter-Day Saints Territories, commonly known as the “Norman Lands.”

    The story was as apocryphal as that of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. But it was leaked to an eager young reporter for one of the global newsnets, where it eventually became the lead item in the nightly special: “World War V: Day Three.” On Day Five Jake Smith was again in the news as a lynch mob dragged him from police headquarters and hung him from a lamp post in Temple Square, not thirty yards from the statue of another famous Smith, no relation.

    By Day Sixteen the news anchors were trotting out historians who spent their time debating whether the current unpleasantness should be called World War III, IV, V, the Fourth Nuclear War, or the First Interplanetary War.

    There were reasons to support the interplanetary designation, since in the early days some Lunar and Martian settlements had sided with one or another of the Terran factions, and even a few La Grange colonies began tiptoeing toward a foreign policy. But by the time Jake Smith was hung all the Outlanders had declared neutrality.

    In the end, the decision was made in an office on Sixth Avenue, New York City, Eastern Capitalist Confederation, by a network logo design analyst. The overnight Arbitrons on the numeral V were strongly positive. The V looked sexy and might stand for Victory, so World War V it was.

    The next day, Sixth Avenue was vaporized.

    ***

    The global networks recovered. By Day Twenty-nine all were embroiled in the question: Is This IT? By “it,” they meant the Holocaust, the Four Horsemen, the Final War, the Extinction of Mankind. It was a tough question. Nobody wanted to commit too strongly either way, remembering the egg on the faces of so many who cried doom at the outbreak of the Fizzle War. But all the nets promised to be the first with the news.

    That it had resulted from a malfunction surprised no one. The strike by the Norman Territories against the Burmese Empire was obviously an error. Neither combatant had any grievances against the other. But shortly after the failure of the MCM in Wyoming, the Burmese had plenty of reason for anger.

    The Moroni VI satellite, in near-Earth orbit, made its move somewhere over Tibet, mirved fifty miles above Singapore, and began evasive action. All six warheads strewed decoys in their wakes, and were preceded by twenty similar but harmless mirvs intended to soak up the ABM’s and lasers. The Burmese computer barely got a glimpse of the onrushing horde. It decided the Moroni VI was going for ground-bursts at a minimum of twelve targets. About the time it reached that decision, the ten-megaton warheads exploded thirty miles over the province of New South Wales. The resulting burst of gamma radiation produced an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that blew out every telephone, vidscreen, transformer, and electric sheep-shearer from Woomera to Sydney, and caused the sewage system in Melbourne to run backward.

    The Burmese Potentate was a headstrong man. His advisors pointed out that the EMP tactic should have been followed by invasion if Salt Lake City really intended to go to war. But he had been in Melbourne at the time of the attack. He was not amused.

    In two hours, Provo, Utah was radioactive rubble, and the Bonneville Fun-city vanished.

    It was not enough. The Potentate had never been able to distinguish one Occidental religion from another, so he fired a missile at Milano, The Vatican States, for good measure.

    The Council of Popes convened in St. Peter’s. Not the old one, which had been torn down to make way for an apartment block, but the new one, in Sicily, which was glass and plastic. For five days they conferred until the Spokespope emerged to announce the Papal Bull as a Gabriel warhead fell toward Bangkok.

    What Pope Elaine did not announce was another sense-of-the-meeting resolution that had been summed up by vice-Pope Watanabe.

    “If we’re going to hit the B.E.,” Watanabe had said, “why not ‘accidentally’ send one to those fuckers in the B.C.R.?”

    So shortly after Bangkok was flattened by a one-megaton airburst, a second Gabriel fell on the outskirts of Potchefstroom, Boer Communist Republic. That it had been targeted for Johannesburg hardly seemed to matter.

    I really don’t think a world with 50 nuclear powers is a stable one.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  23. Lol..I don’t intend to pay Fox..

    Ben burn (02b525)

  24. Could someone pull my last out of moderation, please. It has quotes that have bad words.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  25. By the way it REALLY won’t be Trump that takes us to war. It will be Congress. We should be demanding that Trump seek an AUMF prior to final negotiations, and certainly if Kim tests another bomb, or flies a missile someone sensitive, Trump needs to get a declaration of war before proceeding.

    The only way we get into war without Congress is if Kim attacks us or an ally. At which point Congress’ vote is a formality.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  26. Show of hands. Who thinks that Scaramucci was an “out of town talent” brought in solely to drive out Priebus and Spicer and got paid with deferment of the tax from the sale of his company which was in the works half a year before his appointment?

    nk (dbc370)

  27. He had decided to become vp of export import bank, but no good deed goes unpunished, you save thousands of people from death like 9/11 the levick crew will get yoi

    narciso (d1f714)

  28. @26. K, you know, Bob Hope and WC Fields excelled at using “bad words” w/o actually using them. It can make for some creative –and fun writing.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  29. Obama can nominate chases head of subprime division for treasury with nary a word

    https://www.onenewsnow.com/perspectives/michelle-malkin/2017/08/09/senate-finally-curious-about-dems-it-suspects

    narciso (d1f714)

  30. How Is the Week Without Happyfeet going?

    Patterico (d64fac)

  31. @32. A good stew can always use seasoning.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  32. Apparently he (happyfeet) is content with it and is looking forward to coming back, so whatever.

    nk (dbc370)

  33. @ ropelight, #18:

    For that statement to make sense in this context, John Kelly would have to be a fool. Is that what you’re implying?

    Demosthenes (8d6d83)

  34. The watercooler gossip has gotten obscene in lieu of recent events

    narciso (d1f714)

  35. Analyses like this from the WaPo — North Korea just called Trump’s bluff. So what happens now? — frighten me because I fear they will falsely lead foreign leaders to overestimate the ability of anyone, from the Joint Chiefs to Congress to Gen. Kelly, to restrain Trump if he goes completely off the rails.

    I don’t worry that he’ll wake up one morning, read a tweet that angers him (e.g., some Democratic senator mocking him), and then turn to his aides with instructions to immediately launch a preemptive nuclear strike on North Korea.

    But I do worry that he’ll take lesser steps that nevertheless start a cascade of events which leave no one — from the Joint Chiefs to Congress to Gen. Kelly to Trump — with any other options than outright military conflict. (We’re still “at war” with the Norks to the full extent we were ever “at war” with the Norks, meaning our “police action” is only subject to an armistice.)

    Beldar (fa637a)

  36. I’m worried we will wake up one say and nuclear weapons have been unleashed on a.ajor city in Asia,

    narciso (d1f714)

  37. How Is the Week Without Happyfeet going?

    About a third the comment volume.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  38. OK, I’m gonna take it OUT of moderation myself.

    ———–

    From the start of John Varley’s “Demon” (a book mostly about something else)

    It was common knowledge that World War V started in a defective twenty-cent Molecular Circuit Matrix in a newly-installed firecontrol computer four miles below Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming.

    An investigation eventually led to the apartment of Jacob Smith, thirty-eight, of 3400 Temple, Salt Lake City. Smith had tested the MCM and allowed it to be installed in Western Bioelectric’s Mark XX “Archangel” Brain Array. The Archangel had then replaced the aging Mark Nineteen in defense of the New Reformed Latter-Day Saints Territories, commonly known as the “Norman Lands.”

    The story was as apocryphal as that of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. But it was leaked to an eager young reporter for one of the global newsnets, where it eventually became the lead item in the nightly special: “World War V: Day Three.” On Day Five Jake Smith was again in the news as a lynch mob dragged him from police headquarters and hung him from a lamp post in Temple Square, not thirty yards from the statue of another famous Smith, no relation.

    ***

    That it had resulted from a malfunction surprised no one. The strike by the Norman Territories against the Burmese Empire was obviously an error. Neither combatant had any grievances against the other. But shortly after the failure of the MCM in Wyoming, the Burmese had plenty of reason for anger.

    The Moroni VI satellite, in near-Earth orbit, made its move somewhere over Tibet, mirved fifty miles above Singapore, and began evasive action. All six warheads strewed decoys in their wakes, and were preceded by twenty similar but harmless mirvs intended to soak up the ABM’s and lasers. The Burmese computer barely got a glimpse of the onrushing horde. It decided the Moroni VI was going for ground-bursts at a minimum of twelve targets. About the time it reached that decision, the ten-megaton warheads exploded thirty miles over the province of New South Wales. The resulting burst of gamma radiation produced an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that blew out every telephone, vidscreen, transformer, and electric sheep-shearer from Woomera to Sydney, and caused the sewage system in Melbourne to run backward.

    The Burmese Potentate was a headstrong man. His advisors pointed out that the EMP tactic should have been followed by invasion if Salt Lake City really intended to go to war. But he had been in Melbourne at the time of the attack. He was not amused.

    In two hours, Provo, Utah was radioactive rubble, and the Bonneville Fun-city vanished.

    It was not enough. The Potentate had never been able to distinguish one Occidental religion from another, so he fired a missile at Milano, The Vatican States, for good measure.

    The Council of Popes convened in St. Peter’s. Not the old one, which had been torn down to make way for an apartment block, but the new one, in Sicily, which was glass and plastic. For five days they conferred until the Spokespope emerged to announce the Papal Bull as a Gabriel warhead fell toward Bangkok.

    What Pope Elaine did not announce was another sense-of-the-meeting resolution that had been summed up by vice-Pope Watanabe.

    “If we’re going to hit the B.E.,” Watanabe had said, “why not ‘accidentally’ send one to those fuc*ers in the B.C.R.?”

    So shortly after Bangkok was flattened by a one-megaton airburst, a second Gabriel fell on the outskirts of Potchefstroom, Boer Communist Republic. That it had been targeted for Johannesburg hardly seemed to matter.

    I really don’t think a world with 50 nuclear powers is a stable one.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  39. I miss the Col. as well as happyfeet.

    mg (31009b)

  40. This would.£ be if some on ignored a similar in Mclean?
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4773988/Six-soldiers-wounded-Paris.html?ito=social-
    twitter_mailonline#ixzz4pHJNfDuG

    narciso (d1f714)

  41. 23 – Kevin M, EXCELLENT comment.

    It’s going to be even more insane when Iran catches up to N Korea.

    On the other hand, some people prefer the Brian Williams approach:

    https://www.mediaite.com/tv/brian-williams-says-that-its-our-job-to-scare-people-to-death-over-north-korea/amp/

    harkin (aca8cf)

  42. That was like 1984 blended with Brazil Smith a dose of Phillip jozr farmer!

    narciso (d1f714)

  43. #37, Demo, no.

    ropelight (072508)

  44. More Fake News, via Instapundit:

    WaPo’s Erik Wemple: New York Times guilty of large screw-up on climate-change story.

    “”Correction: August 9, 2017
    An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report. While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times.”

    That correction, which sits at the foot of the story, dutifully straightens out the record. Yet given the magnitude of the screw-up, it should sit atop the story, surrounded by red flashing lights and perhaps an audio track to instruct readers: Warning: This story once peddled a faulty and damaging premise.

    That premise suggests that the Trump administration is stifling a damaging draft report — part of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment — with dire warnings about climate change. . . .

    …….As part of its corrective effort, the New York Times has pulled the language saying that “a copy of it was obtained by the New York Times,” as well as the mistaken assertion that it has “not yet been made public.” Even so, the article continues to carry this line: “Another scientist involved in the process, who spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity, said he and others were concerned that it would be suppressed.” As well as this one: “Scientists say they fear that the Trump administration could change or suppress the report.”

    Though it may be the case that certain scientists maintain such fears, that’s a pretty tough position in light of the fact that the report “was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January” and publicized by the New York Times in August.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/08/09/new-york-times-guilty-of-large-screw-up-on-climate-change-story/

    harkin (aca8cf)

  45. Now if the report was released in January its a far bet it was conmissionex by the skydragon worship cult

    narciso (d1f714)

  46. If it was leaked in January, my guess is it was Jan 19th.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  47. Just like the ghcq leak that promptex hannigans resignation.

    narciso (d1f714)

  48. t’s not a good look to be endlessly tweeting like a jackass about issues of personal pique, while the American people continue to suffer from your stalled legislative agenda

    Reasonable people would think about whether one was connected to the other. Some would say it’s unbecoming. But others would say it’s the only way he can communicate with the public, considering Journolist and its imitators. Others would say it’s an odd way to pass the time when nobody else is answering the phones because it’s ‘way after work hours. But since there’s nobody to talk to at that hour, you’re not slacking on political work.
    It does remind us that Congress has to be bribed to do its work. See Cornusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase and a thousand little gimmees. And maybe a job requirement that POTUS be a slick and effective briber on one hand, or a blackmailer like LBJ (“don’t trust a man ’til I have his pecker in my pocket”) isn’t the sort of thing we’d like to see in the formal job description. But objecting to Trump’s stalled agenda–compared to others, or is that Not a Good Thing to do?–does lead to that conclusion. Anybody want to go there?

    Richard Aubrey (0d7df4)

  49. “Not a Good Thing to do?–does lead to that conclusion. Anybody want to go there?”

    I really don’t want Trump trying to bribe or blackmail anyone. The best argument has always been truth but it’s been so long since anyone wielded it with effectiveness that it’s almost an alien form to the pols and it’s downright blasphemy to the media.

    I’m still completely unconvinced on Trump’s maturity/competence to grow into the office. He certainly hasnt shown any gain of gravitas since being sworn in.

    On the other hand, he’s still the one guy who was able to convince enough voters to keep a completely corrupt, dishonest and power-mad destructo-bot from gaining the power to use those same methods you mentioned to destroy the enemies of Deep-State/DNC/Rino Incorporated while increasing its power.

    Right now we have a media/political complex trying to scare everyone that we’re headed to nuclear war with a madman while at the same time openly longing for a return to the days of the maturity and intelligence of the idiots who armed him in the first place.

    You can’t fight that with anything but truth.

    harkin (8834d2)

  50. Everyone is focused on nookular..

    Wikipedia
    in 1987 that the North “possessed up to 250 metric tons of chemical weapons” including mustard (a blister agent) and some nerve agents.[134] In 2009 the International Crisis Group reported that the consensus expert view was that North Korea had a stockpile of about 2,500 to 5,000 metric tons of chemical weapons, including mustard gas, sarin (GB) and other nerve agents.[135] The South Korean Ministry of National Defense had the same estimate in 2010.[134][136] In 2014, the South Korean Defense Ministry estimated that “the North had stockpiled 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons and had a capacity to produce a variety of biological weapons.”[137] In 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense reported to Congress that North Korea’s CW program “likely possesses a CW stockpile” and likely had “the capability to produce nerve, blister, blood, and choking agents.”[14] The report also found that “North Korea probably could employ CW agents by modifying a variety of conventional munitions, including artillery and ballistic missiles. In addition, North Korean forces are prepared to operate in a contaminated environment; they train regularly in chemical defense operations.”[14] The report indicated that North Korea “continues to develop its biological research and development capabilities” and “may consider the use of biological weapons as an option, contrary to its obligations under the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention.”[14]

    Ben burn (9f4670)

  51. Plenty of howitzers on the DMZ for express delivery.

    Ben burn (9f4670)

  52. Breaking- Trump response to NK’s mocking: “I don’t think they mean that… things will happen to them like they never thought possible.”

    Oh, Captain, ask the crew of the USS Pueblo if NK meanswhat it says. Then ask for the ship back.

    “I am not an Atomic Playboy.” – Vice Admiral Blandy, Commander, ‘Operation Crossroads’ – Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests, 1946

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  53. Avenge my uncle, Mr. President – people thought he got off easy being born in 1947 and being assigned to the Korean DMZ, but let me tell you there was a good deal of back-and-forth that got overshadowed by the police action to the south.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  54. Report: Trump “Pissed” That Kelly Tried To Control His Twitter Account

    Wait ’til he sees this week’s TIME cover. It’s a pisser, too.

    thehill.com/…/346011-kelly-joins-list-of-trump-staffers-to-get-time-magazine-cover

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  55. Beldar–

    Do you believe a negotiated solution is possible? That Kim will honor a new agreement when he ahs never done so before, starting with the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

    If so, what form would it take? If he violated it what would you do? (answer: nothing, he’d have 1200 ICBMs by then).

    Kevin M (752a26)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0965 secs.