The U.S. media went into overdrive and Fox reported on April 14 that the armada was “steaming” toward North Korea. Instead of steaming towards the Korea peninsula, the carrier strike group was actually headed in the opposite direction to take part in “scheduled exercises with Australian forces in the Indian Ocean,” according to Defense News, which broke the story. The presence of the U.S. carrier strike group, and the threat of a U.S. military strike on North Korea, had weighed heavily on Chinese minds and in the media here. “None of the U.S. aircraft carriers that South Korea is desperately waiting for has come!”Was it all a misunderstanding, or deliberate obfuscation? Nor should the aircraft carrier’s presence, alone, be given too much weight, he added, since any early strikes on North Korea would likely have been carried out by long-range aircraft.

Source: thestar April 18, 2017 18:22 UTC