What's next for Travis King, US soldier detained in North Korea

 

The US soldier Travis King crossed into North Korea and set off a high-stakes political row between two countries that have no official channels of communication.

Why the US Army tried to exterminate the bison

In 1894, a notorious poacher, Ed Howell, was caught in Yellowstone National Park slaughtering bison, which were on the brink of extinction. US Army soldiers patrolling the park brought him into custody, and the story led to the first US federal law protecting wildlife. The soldiers were thought of as heroes for stopping the killer. But it was the US Army who had been responsible for driving bison to near-extinction in the first place.

Trump finally calls widow of fallen Army soldier — only to tell her ‘he knew what he signed up for’

After making the issue of the four soldiers who died in Niger two weeks ago all about himself Donald Trump called the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson had this truly sympathetic statement of condolence to make. (That is sarcasm)

Donald Trump on Tuesday finally called the families of four U.S. soldiers who were killed during an ambush in Niger earlier this month, only to tell the widow of U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, “he knew what he signed up for.”

“Yes, he said it,” Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Miami Gardens) told ABC. “It’s so insensitive. He should have not have said that. He shouldn’t have said it.”

Trump called Tuesday afternoon and spoke to Johnson’s widow, who’s pregnant with her third child to the deceased Army soldier. Johnson is also survived by a 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter.

When asked by a reporter at a press conference on Monday Donald Trump in his usual tone deaf and insensitive manner the deaths of the four Special Operations soldiers all about himself. Rather than showing any kind of empathy for the four men who died or their families.  

U.S. Army is Planning For a Failed Nuclear State in North Korea

Paul McLeary of Defense News posted today about a classified military wargame that played out the sudden collapse of North Korea and the immediate actions of the U.S. Military.

McLeary writes:

The Unified Quest war game conducted this year by Army planners posited the collapse of a nuclear-armed, xenophobic, criminal family regime that had lorded over a closed society and inconveniently lost control over its nukes as it fell.

Yes, the most terrifying thing about North Korea is actually if it loses positive control of its nuclear technology and any active warheads it has.

The war games didn't go smoothly:

There were a few major problems tripping up the military, generals at the event told a handful of reporters, talking only without attribution.

— No "ISR": It's difficult to establish Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance in a hermit kingdom as closed off to the world as North Korea. Essentially, the generals involved agreed that they would move rapidly north of the 38th parallel and be totally blind, without well established information infrastructure.

— What they do know is that nuclear centers are based around civilian hubs. Mitigating, protecting, and defending against droves of civilians takes care, more personnel, and adds to the confusion around securing nuclear technology.

— Well-established logistics hubs feeding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have hamstrung the world's greatest logistics machine: the U.S. Army. Army planners say that they've lost practice at co-opting and setting up initial supply means for a war, like railroads, especially in "austere" conditions.

It took 56 days for the U.S. to flow two divisions’ worth of soldiers into the failed nuclear-armed state of “North Brownland” and as many as 90,000 troops to deal with the country’s nuclear stockpiles, a major U.S. Army war game concluded this winter.