Woodward’s Book Claims that Former President Obama Considered Preemptive Strike on North Korea

Assuming this claim is true in Woodward’s latest rumormongering book, I don’t see what the problem is with the US President weighing the options available to address the North Korean nuclear issue.  Obviously after been given the information President Obama decided not to do it:

Former U.S. President Barack Obama mulled a preemptive attack on North Korea after its fifth nuclear test in 2016, according to a book released Tuesday.

Obama was deeply disturbed to learn that North Korea had conducted its biggest-yet nuclear detonation on Sept. 9, 2016, with the North claiming the new nuclear bomb could be mounted on a ballistic missile, journalist Bob Woodward wrote in “Fear: Trump in the White House.”

“Even with his intense desire to avoid a war, Obama decided the time had come to consider whether the North Korean nuclear threat could be eliminated in a surgical military strike,” the book claims.

“The North Korean threat had not been diminished, and in September 2016 Obama posed a sensitive question to his National Security Council: Was it possible to launch a preemptive military strike, supported by cyber attacks, on North Korea to take out their nuclear and missile programs?” it continues.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the closest the US came to a preemptive strike was during the Clinton Administration when the nuclear issue first came up.  Strike planning was called off after Jimmy Carter’s unilateral intervention by traveling to Pyongyang. It does make me wonder how different things would be now if the Clinton administration did in fact launch this strike on North Korea’s nuclear program?