According to the United States daily, the White House said that the order to send the aircraft carrier to the East Sea could send a powerful signal to counter North Korea, while President Trump told Fox News in the afternoon of the same day that "we send an armada".
A U.S. Navy strike group will be moving toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program.Earlier this month North Korea tested a liquid-fueled Scud missile which only traveled a fraction of its range.The strike group, called Carl Vinson, includes an aircraft carrier and will make its way from Singapore toward the Korean peninsula, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity."We feel the increased presence is necessary", the official said, citing North Korea's worrisome behavior.
President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday denied being misleading about a USA carrier strike group's push toward the Korean peninsula, saying it never gave an arrival date and that the ships were still on their way.
"The Vinson, as I said on the record, was operating up-and-down the western Pacific and we're doing exactly what we said, and that is we are shifting her instead of continuing one direction as she pulled out of Singapore", he told reporters overseas in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
US President Donald Trump, right, said the US was sending "an armada, very powerful" toward the Korean Peninsula, but at the time the armada was still 4800km away.
"If you threaten them and your threat is not credible, it's only going to undermine whatever your policy toward them is", said North Korea expert Joel Wit at the 38 North monitoring group, run by Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. We're ready to defend our allies in this region.
Mr Trump stoked the fears of military action with a Twitter post: "North Korea is looking for trouble".
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While it is nearly 4,830 km from the Korean peninsula, the arrival of the American aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Eastern Sea would take place around April 25th. It is headed to the Korean peninsula.
"The bottom line is in our effort to always be open about what we're doing, we said that we were going to change the Vinson's upcoming schedule", Mattis said.
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) transiting the Sunda Strait between the Indonesian Islands of Java and Sumatra on April 15, 2017. "That's a fact. It happened".
Also Wednesday, Spicer announced that Trump will host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on May 20 to discuss a "conflict-ending settlement between the Palestinians and Israel". "It is happening, rather", he said at a regular briefing.
"The aircraft carrier was sleep-walking", joked another.
"Combined Forces Command had been on standby from early morning April 7, after we received intelligence reports around April 6 that the North would carry out a massive provocation", the military spokesman added.
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