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Dissembling on North Korea, Trump creates a crisis of credibility

Donald Trump told the world he'd dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group towards North Korea. We now know that didn't actually happen.
Image: FILE PHOTO - Donald Trump gets a briefing before he tours the pre-commissioned U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford in Newport News Virginia
U.S. President Donald Trump gets a briefing before he tours the pre-commissioned U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford at Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding facilities in Newport News, Virginia, U.S. on March 2, 2017.

"Despite what the White House, and the National Security Advisor, and the Defense Secretary all said, the USS Carl Vinson was not steaming toward North Korea. It was not steaming north toward the Korean peninsula. In fact, while they were all saying that the USS Carl Vinson was steaming toward North Korea, it was 3,000 miles away, steaming south, in the opposite direction."

I imagine much of the public gets tired of hearing this, but this is not normal.Sure, there are times in which public misdirection is deemed necessary for security reasons. When then-President George W. Bush visited troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving in 2003, for example, the White House briefly told reporters false information about the president's whereabouts.Last week's developments in the Pacific were not in any way similar. The president and his administration, during heightened tensions with an enemy that has nuclear weapons, told the world more than once that an aircraft carrier strike group was en route to North Korea, when in fact, there was no aircraft carrier strike group en route to North Korea.And while the standoff with North Korea created a potential crisis, the Trump administration's rhetoric has created a different kind of problem: a crisis of credibility. It is increasingly difficult to imagine how anyone -- friend or foe -- can accept the White House's rhetoric at face value, even about matters as important as national security.
Under normal circumstances, developments like these would be the subject of congressional scrutiny, with some fairly obvious questions in need of answers: did the president and his team deliberately mislead? Did the president make an order that the military ignored? Did Trump's Pentagon not know where its aircraft carrier strike group was and in what direction it was headed?