The White House is defending President Donald Trump's claim that a US Navy warship was heading to the Korean peninsula when, in fact, it was heading in the opposite direction.
Last week, the President claimed he was sending an "armada" to the waters off the Korean coast as North Korea prepared for a missile test that it conducted last weekend.
But in fact the USS Carl Vinson was sailing in exactly the opposite direction.
The White House denies it attempted to mislead reporters, as our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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It sounded very good at the time….breathless news reports last week in the United States after the White House and the Pentagon announced the USS Carl Vinson, one of America's most powerful warships, was on its way to the Korean Peninsula.
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With news organizations digging out the fever pitch music that invariably accompanies TV coverage of war here, they were emboldened by President Trump who offered Fox News this description of his reaction to the nuclear threat posed by North Korea's Kim Jong Un.
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So far so good.
Reporters all thought the carrier group was on its way.
America's allies in South Korea and Japan thought the carrier group was on its way.
Even North Korea may have thought the carrier group was on its way.
Except, it wasn't.
That became apparent when the US Navy itself Tweeted pictures of the USS Carl Vinson on Monday sailing south through the waters off Indonesia……..in exactly the wrong way for a battleship allegedly heading towards Korea.
At the White House beleaguered press secretary Sean Spicer.
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Denying that the President had lied, Mr. Spicer - who has shown a remarkable propensity for misleading reporters - essentially claimed that all roads lead to Rome, and all oceans eventually lead to the Korean peninsula.
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It is happening now….the ships have turned around and will have travelled the three and a half thousand miles that currently separate them from the waters off the Korean Peninsula.
Kim Jong Un must surely know by now that the warships will be bearing down on him in time to mark the one week anniversary of his missile test….since they are no longer taking the scenic route..
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