The John Batchelor Show

Monday April 24, 2017

Air Date: 
April 24, 2017

Photo Left: US Navy exercise with Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Co-Host Thaddeus McCotter, WJR.
Hour One: Bill Roggio; Thomas Joscelyn: Long War Journal, FDD. Brice Bechtoil, author' Security in North Asia in the Kim Jung-un Era." Gordon Chang, Daily Beast.

ISIS of Syria rallying on the Euphrates at Deir Ezzor. @BillRoggio. @ThomasJoscelyn. @FollowFDD @ThadMcCotter

 

"...The US military announced today that Abdurakhmon Uzbeki, a senior Islamic State operative and “close associate” of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, was killed during a special forces raid on April 6. The operation was carried out near the city of Mayadin in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor.

 

The Islamic State has long battled forces loyal to Bashar al Assad’s regime in the city of Deir Ezzor and the surrounding area. The US also frequently carries out airstrikes against the jihadists’ fighting positions and oil infrastructure in the province, but raids involving ground forces are rare.

 

Uzbeki “facilitated the movement of ISIS foreign terror fighters and funds,” according to a statement issued by the US military. He “played a key role” in the group’s “external terror attack plotting.”

 

US intelligence officials have concluded that Uzbeki “facilitated the high profile attack” on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey this past New Year’s Eve. The massacre left 39 people dead and dozens more wounded...."

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/04/us-abu-bakr-al-baghdadis-...

 

__________

 

Crisis in North Asia: PRC, US, ROK, Japan, Russia gather war-fighters surrounding the Kim regime. @GordonGChang @ThadMcCotter Bruce Bechtol, author "Security in North Asia in the Kim Jung-un Era."

 

 

WASHINGTON — Behind the Trump administration’s sudden urgency in dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis lies a stark calculus: a growing body of expert studies and classified intelligence reports that conclude the country is capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.

 

That acceleration in pace — impossible to verify until experts get beyond the limited access to North Korean facilities that ended years ago — explains why President Trump and his aides fear they are running out of time. For years, American presidents decided that each incremental improvement in the North’s program — another nuclear test, a new variant of a missile — was worrisome, but not worth a confrontation that could spill into open conflict.

 

Now those step-by-step advances have resulted in North Korean warheads that in a few years could reach Seattle. “They’ve learned a lot,” said Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who directed the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, from 1986 to 1997, and whom the North Koreans have let into their facilities seven times.

 

North Korea is now threatening another nuclear test, which would be its sixth in 11 years. The last three tests — the most recent was in September — generated Hiroshima-size explosions. It is unclear how Mr. Trump would react to a test, but he told representatives of the United Nations Security Council at the White House on Monday that they should be prepared to pass far more restrictive sanctions, which American officials say should include cutting off energy supplies....

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-missil...

 
Hour Two: David Drucker, CNN, Washington Examiner. John Fund, NRO. Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents.
 

Senators called to White House for a briefing on North Korea. @DavidMDrucker @JohnFund @ThadMcCotter

 

"The White House announced Monday that it would host an unusual private briefing on North Korea for the entire Senate, prompting questions from lawmakers about whether the Trump administration intends to use the event as a photo op ahead of its 100-day mark.

 

Press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that the lawmakers would be briefed Wednesday by several senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. He emphasized that the meeting plan had been convened by Senate leadership and that the White House was serving “as the location.”

 

Yet the White House setting perplexed lawmakers who have grown accustomed to such briefings taking place in a secure location on Capitol Hill, where there is more room to handle such a large group.

 

[Trump gets on the phone to Asia as another North Korea flash point looms]

 

Past administrations have often held briefings for smaller groups of about two dozen or fewer lawmakers in the White House Situation Room. But they have traditionally sent high-level aides to Capitol Hill to hold discussions with larger groups in secure underground locations.

 

A senior Trump administration official said the meeting with senators will take place in the auditorium at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the building next to the White House that houses most of the National Security Council. The auditorium will be temporarily turned into a “sensitive compartmented information facility,” or SCIF, which is the term for a room where sensitive national security information can be shared, the official said...."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/04/24/senate-s...

 

 
 
Hour Three: Josh Rogin, Washington Post. Claudia Rosett, Independent Women's Forum. Steve Warner, DarkCity.FM.
The "Trump-Russia-surveillance" story and Obama's "fear of meddling."  @ThadMcCotter

 

"The examination also showed that at one point, President Obama himself was reluctant to disclose the suspected Russian influence in the election last summer, for fear his administration would be accused of meddling." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html...

 

 

DPRK fails. @Crosett 

The Moral Obscenity of Kim's North Korea By Claudia Rosett April 23, 2017 North Korea's menace has been all over the news, including its missiles tests, visible preparations for a sixth nuclear test and its threats to attack a U.S. aircraft carrier and to reduce the U.S. to ashes with a "super-mighty preemptive strike." Assorted experts, debating how to handle the rogue regime of Kim Jong Un, have been weighing the pros and cons of trying yet more sanctions, new negotiations, tough talk, pressure on China, displays of military might, actual use of military force to take out North Korean missiles or even nuclear facilities, or assorted permutations of all these options and then some...

 

https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-moral-obscenity-of-kims-north-korea/

 

 
 
Hour Four: Joseph Wheelan, author, "Last Full Measure." John Tamny, Forbes.com; RealClearMarkets.com.
 

Their Last Full Measure: The Final Days of the Civil War by Joseph Wheelan. PART 5 of 6.

 

Dramatic developments unfolded during the first months of 1865 that brought America's bloody Civil War to a swift climax.

 

As the Confederacy crumbled under the Union army's relentless "hammering," Federal armies marched on the Rebels' remaining bastions in Alabama, the Carolinas, and Virginia. General William T. Sherman's battle-hardened army conducted a punitive campaign against the seat of the Rebellion, South Carolina, while General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant sought to break the months-long siege at Petersburg, defended by Robert E. Lee's starving Army of Northern Virginia. In Richmond, Confederate President Jefferson Davis struggled to hold together his unraveling nation while simultaneously sanctioning diplomatic overtures to bid for peace. Meanwhile, President Abraham Lincoln took steps to end slavery in the United States forever.

 

Their Last Full Measure relates these thrilling events, which followed one on the heels of another, from the battles ending the Petersburg siege and forcing Lee's surrender at Appomattox to the destruction of South Carolina's capital, the assassination of Lincoln, and the intensive manhunt for his killer. The fast-paced narrative braids the disparate events into a compelling account that includes powerful armies; leaders civil and military, flawed and splendid; and ordinary people, black and white, struggling to survive in the war's wreckage

 

https://www.amazon.com/Their-Last-Full-Measure-Final/dp/0306823608/ref=l...