(uptempo, rhythmic music)
- That brings us to the fourth assumption,
that China wants to disarm North Korea.
We want the Chinese to help us disarm North Korea.
It's in China's interest to disarm North Korea.
But unfortunately, there are disturbing implications
that the Chinese are in fact arming their neighbor.
On April 15th we witnessed a very large canister
paraded through the center of Pyongyang
during the Kim Il-sung parade.
That canister was Chinese in origin, from what we can tell,
and it's the canister that the Chinese use
to carry their DF-41 missile.
A DF-41 has a range of at least 8,700 miles,
putting all of the American homeland in the range.
Now this of course is not to say conclusively
that the Chinese gave the North Koreans the DF-41.
After all, the North Koreans could have paraded
an empty canister,
the North Koreans could have stolen the plans
from the Chinese,
or the North Koreans could have gotten the plans
for the missile from a country
to which China proliferated the missile, perhaps Pakistan.
But the parading of this ominous-looking canister
should lead the administration in Washington
to start asking Beijing some pointed questions.
And while they're at it,
the international community should ask China
where North Korea got the missile
that it successfully tested on May 21.
The missile tested on May 21
is the same that they tested February 12th.
Both of those are land-based missiles.
The February 12th missile
looks to be a variant of the missile
that the North Koreans tested on August 24th
from below the surface of the Sea of Japan
and the missile that the North Koreans tested on August 24th
that looks an awful lot
like China's JL-1 submarine-launched missile.
Are you noticing a pattern
that missiles that look like they're Chinese
are mysteriously showing up in North Korea's inventory?
And there's some more bad news.
The canister we saw on April 15th, it was being paraded
through the heart of the North Korean capital
on a Chinese vehicle.
The 16-wheeled vehicle, we know where it came from,
it was manufactured by Sanjiang Special Vehicle Corporation,
which is a unit of
China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp.
CASIC, as China Aerospace is known,
is closely connected with China's People's Liberation Army.
Moreover, that enterprise also transferred the chassis
for the transporter erector launcher
that the North Koreans use for their KN-08,
a three-stage missile.
We know that because Beijing admitted it in 2012.
The New York Times reports
that Chinese officials told their American counterparts
that they sold the chassis to the North Koreans
because the North Koreans said
they wanted the chassis for logging vehicles.
Now that explanation doesn't make sense on many levels,
but one thing we can point out
is that those chassis are wider than the roads
in North Korea's logging areas. (audience chuckles)
And indeed,
American intelligence officials will privately tell you
that the story is worse than what The New York Times said.
Intelligence officials will tell you
that the Obama administration talked to the Chinese
before the sale of the chassis
and Beijing went ahead anyway.
My sense?
I can't prove it,
but my sense is that the Chinese not only sold the chassis
for these transporter erector launchers
but they also sold the rest of the vehicle,
in other words, the missile interface.
And supplying the vehicle is critical
because it makes North Korea a real threat
to the American homeland.
We are not concerned about
North Korea's longest-range missile being used as a weapon.
That's the Taepodong-2 or the Taepodong-3,
depending who you talk to.
The Taepodongs take weeks to transport,
to assemble, to fuel, and test.
We can kill them on the pad.
But these other missiles are real threats
because they're mobile.
Because they're mobile, they can hide.
Because they can hide, we cannot with any assurance
kill them before they are launched at us.
And the intercontinental ballistic missiles
that North Korea tested on July 4th and July 28th?
They rode to their launch sites on Chinese vehicles as well.
China, we have to conclude, is weaponizing North Korea,
giving it the capability to kill Americans
by the tens of millions.
And by the way, just for completing the conversation,
the Chinese have also been supplying components,
equipment, and materials
for North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
The flow of materials from China to North Korea
has occurred over the course of decades
and cannot be anything other than
a result of conscious policy in Beijing.
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