Defense Secretary James Mattis revealed Monday that some military options to address the North Korean nuclear threat will not result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of South Koreans.
“There are many military options, in concert with our allies that we will take to defend our allies and our own interests,” Mattis told reporters, without elaborating on details. “I don’t want to go into that.”
It is unclear what military action the U.S. and allies could take that would not trigger a conflict. Even regime change poses serious risks to regional stability.
The defense secretary previously said that a war with North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale,” explaining that “it would be a war that fundamentally we don’t want.”
“It will be a war more serious in terms of human suffering than anything we’ve seen since 1953,” he told the House Appropriations Committee in June. “It will involve the massive shelling of an ally’s capital, which is one of the most densely packed cities on earth.” Mattis was clearly referring to Seoul, which is in range of North Korea’s massive artillery force.
“We would win at great cost,” he said during the summer hearing.
Read more at:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/19/mattis-says-us-can-take-military-action-against-north-korea-without-losing-seoul/
