Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Friday that the United States had four options — "all real options" — on North Korea and that the Defense Department was "in preparation for a real military exercise."
"There are really four options that the United States looks at," Rogers, the former Michigan GOP representative, told Jake Tapper on CNN. "They're all real options.
"They all have a different set of consequences."
Rogers said that the first was "decapitation, meaning you strike the leadership," including dictator Kim Jong Un "and some of the senior leaders around him.
"Take them out of the equation," he added.
The others include a limited strike on Pyongyang's nuclear apparatus — "the ability to produce, design, and the way that they can get those problem rockets to and from the launch pads.
"The next one," Rogers said, was a "full-on, let's-get-it-done, take-out of the 8,000 artillery tubes on the border — or as many as you can — and move South Korean troops over the DMZ."
"That's obviously a bad one," Rogers said of the latter choice, noting that Seoul, South Korea, is 35 miles from the North Korean border has about 25 million residents.
"It has huge casualty counts.
"But they're real options — and all of the things you see happening with our Defense Department is in preparation for a real military exercise.
"They're sending a very clear signal to Kim Jong Un: 'Listen, this is for real.' And hopefully it does."
The final option remains diplomacy, Rogers told Tapper.
"We're willing to do those, but you're going to have to cooperate," he said of North Korea.
"I think they're trying to set the table for a stronger and a better-negotiated diplomatic solution at the end of the day."
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