Dems to introduce bill barring Trump from preemptive strikes without Congress approval

Some Democratic senators in the United States are planning to introduce a bill preventing Republican President Donald Trump from launching a preemptive strike on North Korea or other countries without the approval of Congress, according to a report.  

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on Wednesday that the bill would seek to bar Trump from launching "nuclear or conventional" without congressional consent.

"Trump's North Korea threats are real. I will intro bill w brianschatz & CoryBooker to prohibit any preemptive action w/o vote by Congress," Murphy tweeted on Wednesday, referring to Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

He also called on Republicans to support the measure to constrain the president’s "most dangerous power – to make war,” warning such a strike "could kill hundreds of thousands" of people on the Korean Peninsula.

Tensions between the US and North Korea have dramatically increased following a series of weapons tests by Pyongyang and an ugly war of words between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

North Korea has stepped the pace of its missile tests and tested what its government claimed was a hydrogen bomb.  The North Korean leader ordered the production of more rocket warheads and engines in August, shortly after the United States suggested that its threats of military action and sanctions were having an impact on Pyongyang’s behavior.

Pyongyang says it will not give up on its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward the country and dissolves the US-led UN command in South Korea. Thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.

PressTV-North Korea calls Trump's threat ‘declaration of war’

A North Korean parliamentary committee has called recent remarks by US President Donald Trump at the UN a declaration of war against Pyongyang.

In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump warned  that the United States would “totally destroy” the country of 26 million people if necessary.

In a letter to international leaders, a North Korean parliamentary committee has said Trump’s threat constitutes a declaration of war against Pyongyang.

The letter described Trump’s comments as an “intolerable insult to the Korean people, a declaration of war against North Korea and grave threats to the global peace.”

“If Trump thinks that he would bring North Korea, a nuclear power, to its knees through nuclear war threat, it is a big miscalculation and ignorance,” read the letter.

Analysts say Trump’s threats against North Korea are counterproductive and justify Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and missile programs that it insists are for self-defense. They say Trump's speech could have an opposite effect, intensifying the deteriorating situation in the Korean Peninsula.

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