Top admiral: North Korea crisis is 'worst I've seen' [View all]

[nitpicker]

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/330902-top-admiral-north-korea-crisis-is-worst-ive-seen

Top admiral: North Korea crisis is 'worst I've seen'

By Rebecca Kheel - 04/27/17 12:53 PM EDT

The top U.S. admiral in the Pacific said Thursday that the current crisis with North Korea is the “worst [he’s] seen”. “I'll just say that I think the crisis on the Korea peninsula is real; it’s the worst I've seen,” Adm. Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee when asked whether it’s a “gradual Cuban missile crisis.” Harris declined to offer a direct comparison to the crisis confronting the Kennedy administration on Cuba, which nearly led to a nuclear war.

Tensions have skyrocketed on the Korean peninsula over the last few weeks as the world waits to see if Kim Jong Un conducts a sixth nuclear test, as satellite imagery has indicated he is ready to do. North Korea has also upped its typically bellicose rhetoric, threatening to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier and threatening Australia with a nuclear strike.
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“I'm not a student of the Cuban missile crisis,” Harris said. “But what I know of it, it seems that we are faced with a threat and a leader who is intent on achieving his goal of a nuclear capability against the United States.”

As other U.S. officials have said in recent weeks, Harris said it’s not a question of if, but when North Korea has the ability to strike the U.S. mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile.
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