Politics

Confirming reports that first floated several months ago, the Telegraph reports that South Korea is preparing to send special forces units into Pyongyang to conduct a "clinical strike" - searching for, and taking out Kim Jong-un and his closest advisers, in the event that North Korea should start a conventional war. The plan is among the revisions being made to South Korea's latest strategy for dealing with an attack from the North.

Authored by Curt Mills via The National Interest,

With Steve Bannon out of the White House, regrets are abounding in some corners of the right over how President Trump staffed his administration.

As a candidate Donald Trump excoriated his party’s reigning orthodoxies. As president, however, he is running a fairly conventional administration in his first seven months, at least in the policy realm. What happened to making America great again?

In a surprise move that few analysts expected, the US led anti-ISIS coalition operating in Iraq and Syria has bombed parts of the ISIS convoy previously given safe passage out of Lebanon as part of a controversial deal brokered early this week with the Lebanese Army and its allies. Coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillan had previously warned that, “We will take action where necessary; those would be absolutely lucrative targets.” And it now appears the US coalition followed through by attacking the vehicles as they traveled across Syria to the Islamic State stronghold of Deir Ezzor.

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

You may have thought that tensions with North Korea were abating following Kim Jong Un’s missile test stand-down earlier this month.

But as we and others outside of the mainstream media propaganda machine warned, absolutely nothing has been resolved between the United States and the rogue nation.

In our preview this morning, we noted that it seemed odd that Trump's tax speech had reportedly been drafted by White House aide Stephen Miller, the leader of the nationalist arm of the White House staff, as opposed to his Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn.

While notable because it indicated that Trump might return to his populist roots in his first tax reform cheerleading session, most didn't ascribe any more value to the information than that.