The rogue North Korean regime lashed out at Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and other members of President Donald Trump’s so-called “inner circle” for warmongering.
“When will the war break out?” North Korean state media asked Wednesday, adding that the “violent war remarks coming from the U.S. high-level politicians” amid joint military exercises involving thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops and hundreds of allied and South Korean air assets “have made an outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula an established fact.”
“The national security adviser of the White House and a Republican senator said that ‘the chances of war with north Korea’ are increasing every day, a ‘preemptive war’ with north Korea is becoming more likely, the families and dependents of the U.S. troops should be moved out of south Korea,” KCNA wrote, referring to White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and South Carolina’s Graham, “These confrontational warmongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula.”
“I think it’s increasing every day,” McMaster said of the possibility for war with North Korea in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier Saturday. “There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict, but it is a race because he’s getting closer and closer and there’s not much time left,” he said, referencing North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which are advancing at a rate much faster than many observers expected.
Graham said Sunday that North Korea’s test of the new Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile has moved the U.S. and North Korea closer to armed conflict. “We’re getting close to military conflict because North Korea is marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top that can not only get to America, but deliver the weapon. We’re running out of time,” the senator stressed on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
He argued that the U.S. should pull military dependents out of South Korea in preparation for war with the North. “It’s crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea given the provocation of North Korea,” he said. “I want them (the Pentagon) to stop sending dependents, and I think it’s now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea.” The Department of Defense has said that it has no plans to take military dependents out of Korea, a move which could send an undesirable message to North Korea about U.S. intentions, increasing the risk of miscalculation.
Graham has repeatedly suggested that war with North Korea is coming.
The North also criticized CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who hinted at regime change earlier this year, suggesting that the North Korean people would be happier without Kim Jong Un. “The CIA director has made a provocation against us by impudently criticizing our supreme leadership, which is the heart of our people,” North Korean state media asserted in its rant.
“The careless remarks of war by the inner circle of Trump and the reckless military moves by the U.S.” appear to indicate “that the current U.S. administration has made a decision to provoke a war on the Korean peninsula,” KCNA said. “We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it, and should the U.S. miscalculate our patience and light the fuse for a nuclear war, we will surely make the U.S. dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force.”
The North warned the U.S. to act with prudence if it “does not want to be burnt to death by the fire it ignites.”
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