War would be ‘horrific,’ US says, but N. Korean nukes ‘unimaginable’

A military solution to the North Korean missile threat would be “horrific” but allowing Pyongyang to develop the capability to launch a nuclear attack on the United States is “unimaginable,” the top US military officer says in Beijing.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, tells reporters that US President Donald Trump has directly “told us to develop credible viable military options and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Dunford responds to questions about Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon saying in a new interview that the threat posed by North Korea cannot handled by force.

“There’s no military solution, forget it,” Bannon tells The American Prospect. “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

In Beijing, Dunford says it’s “absolutely horrific if there would be a military solution to this problem, there’s no question about it.”

But, he adds, “what’s unimaginable is allowing KJU (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) to develop ballistic missiles with a nuclear warhead that can threaten the United States and continue to threaten the region.”

— AP