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Once again Trump misrepresented the facts....This time re: North Korea/Kim Jung Un (KJU)

Xelor

Xelor

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Donald Trump tweeted:




That all seemed plausible until yesterday. What happened yesterday? We found out that the DPRK's sole nuclear test facility collapsed along with the mountain under which it existed.

It turns out that the collapse likely happened last fall.


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I don't need to be a nuclear scientist to know that if a mountain falls into whatever facility one has built beneath it, one's operations at that facility are over for the foreseeable future
.
Chinese authorities have said they've detected no radiation risk from samples collected along the border. Calls to those departments were not immediately answered on Thursday. The data in the latest Chinese study was collected following the most powerful of North Korea's six nuclear device tests on Sept. 3, which is believed to have triggered four earthquakes over the following weeks. The yield of the bomb was estimated at more than 100 kilotons of TNT, at least 10 times stronger than anything the North had tested previously. The University of Science and Technology of China paper, authored by Tian Dongdong, Yao Jiawen and Wen Lianxing, said the first of those earthquakes, which occurred 8 ½ minutes after the explosion, was "an onsite collapse toward the nuclear test center," while those that followed were an "earthquake swarm" in similar locations.



(Source)
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Okay, so there may be some sort of negotiated agreement between the U.S. and North Korea. If that happens, great. (It may not happen if the ROC and DPRK come to their own agreement that obviates the need for the DPRK to bother with the U.S.)

The problem I have is that Trump openly took credit for KJU's willingness to terminate his nuclear testing. Well, I'm sorry, but an earthquake/mountain collapse that KJU's own explosions caused is not something for which Trump can take credit. Moreover, given the information the ROC shared last October, Trump and other USIC "muckety mucks" had to know that mountain collapsed.

  • Why the hell could't Trump have simply kept mum or, at the very least, not taken credit for something that had nothing to do with his actions?
    • Would that have been so hard to do?
    • How does doing so correspond to anything one might call transparency?
  • Why the hell did Trump allow KJU to perpetrate the fiction that he had given up the testing at a site, that by dint of his own zeal, he'd destroyed? Seriously?
    • That's like having one's meth lab blow up and, then when the cops arrive, saying, "Oh, no, officer. I'm not making meth."


Aside:
The verbiage of the reporting/analysis of the collapse is somewhat comical. The Guardian reporter stated that the collapse made the site unsafe for testing. Um, just how safe does a place need to be to release the energy of a "thousand suns?" I mean, really.

"Oh, no. You can't blow this place to 'kingdom come.' There're no guardrails at the entrance and you don't have skid resistant floor coverings. You'll have to remediate that before you blow it up."​
​
 
Trump is the rooster who thinks his crowing makes the sun rise.
 
They continued testing afterwards, so I guess they still could.
 
Xelor said:
??? did they?
Click to expand...

Nuclear tests created a pocket deep below and the mountain collapsed inwards. China accounts say hundreds were buried alive inside.

As usual, Trump is being disingenuous. NK can't test nuclear warheads for the foreseeable future and probably doesn't need to.

KJU isn't being altruistic. He should already have enough data from the numerous completed warhead and ballistic missile tests.
 
Rogue Valley said:
Nuclear tests created a pocket deep below and the mountain collapsed inwards. China accounts say hundreds were buried alive inside.

As usual, Trump is being disingenuous. NK can't test nuclear warheads for the foreseeable future and probably doesn't need to.

KJU isn't being altruistic. He should already have enough data from the numerous completed warhead and ballistic missile tests.
Click to expand...

Rogue Valley said:
NK can't test nuclear warheads for the foreseeable future and probably doesn't need to.
Click to expand...
I don't see any information that speaks clearly to the likelihood of whether the DPRK needs to or does not need to conduct further tests in order to achieve whatever the DPRK/KJU deems as the goals of conducting such tests.

It's clear that at the most basic level they have the capacity and physical resources (it's quite possible that the human resources needed perished in the collapse) to successfully build a nuclear device that blows things up, thus that works. Whether they've got the resources and capacity to build a sufficiently miniaturized nuclear device that can be mounted on a rocket that can reach the U.S. mainland is something of which I'm not aware. From what I've read, the DPRK likely has a workable rocket (ICBM), but it may or may not have a viable miniaturized warhead.

As a practical matter, U.S. forces are right to have assumed KJU achieved the miniaturization capability.
The commander of US Forces Korea, General Curtis Scaparrotti, stated in October 2014: “I believe they have the capability to miniaturize a device at this point and they have the technology to potentially deliver what they say they have.” Scaparrotti cautioned that “We’ve not seen it tested,” but nonetheless added, “I don’t think as a commander we can afford the luxury of believing perhaps they haven’t gotten there.”​
The Pentagon was at the time clear about the nature of General Scaparrotti's remarks:
“General Scaparrotti said he believes they have the capability to miniaturize. That’s not the same thing as saying that they have the capability to mount, test, and deliver a nuclear weapon in an ICBM.”​
The latest we've heard from the DoD is this:
2017 -- In early August, Gen. Paul Selva – vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – gave a detailed account of the uncertainties that remain about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. “Before we can assert Kim Jong-un has a nuclear missile capable of targeting the United States,” Selva said, “there are a couple of aspects we must know.” He listed several criteria that must be met.​


  • [*=1]“One, [Kim] has to have the missile that will actually range that distance. ...It’s clear that he can build a rocket that can fly that far.
    [*=1][Two,] [h]e’ll have to have the guidance and control system, the guidance and stability control, to move a rocket across that distance without it breaking up. We don’t know if he has that. We don’t know that he doesn’t. ....
    [*=1]The third piece is a re-entry vehicle that can survive the stresses of an intercontinental ballistic missile shot. .... We don’t know if he’s got that technology. We don’t know that he doesn’t, but we don’t know that he does. He hasn’t demonstrated it. We have to see..
    [*=1]And the last is a nuclear weapon that can survive that trip. Again, that’s what we don’t know. We don’t know the design specifics of his nuclear weapons – purported nuclear weapons. We don’t know if he’s been able to miniaturize it and make it stable enough.”

From where I sit, insofar as the facility collapsed, I think it safe to say that the miniaturization of a stable warhead is at least among the things being tested there. (Other design and formulation elements may too have been orchestrated from that facility.) Since that facility is "no more," whatever was KJU's nuclear state of progress has been tangibly halted; thus whatever weapons/warhead he may have completed and stored elsewhere (if he even was storing them elsewhere) are likely all he has and will have for the foreseeable future.

That that is likely so is not the tone and tenor of Trump's remarks about his efforts being the catalyst for KJU's abrupt transition from bellicose bluster to diplomacy. To the extent KJU wanted to avoid being further marginalized (re-marginalized), the collapse of his nuclear research and development facility left him with little choice.

Trump has chosen not to exploit KJU's presently unalterable circumstances to push that little "scrub" back into the corner from which he temerariously emerged. That's Trump's choice, and it remains to be seen whether it's the right choice.
 
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