hornberger tells it like it is, and the neo-con types wouldn't like it;

From the start of the brouhaha that President Trump initiated against North Korea for refusing to destroy its nuclear weapons, I have consistently maintained that the communist regime would never rid itself of its nukes. Even when Trump suddenly did an about-face and fell in love with North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong-Un and convinced himself that his new-found communist friend would “denuclearize,” I said it just wasn’t going to happen. I also said that there was zero chance that Kim would trade his nukes for Trump’s promise of beautiful condo projects along North Korean beaches.

Why was I so certain that Kim would never let go of his nukes? Because he knows that his nukes are what is deterring U.S. officials, including Cold War anticommunist dead-enders like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams, from initiating a regime-change war against his regime.

Oh sure, Trump could engage in the biggest love-fest in history with Kim and he could promise Trump Resorts all across North Korea, but Kim is smart enough to know that as soon as he got rid of his last nuke, all that love and all those promises would go up in regime-change flames.

After all, does anyone really think that Kim isn’t watching what “America First” Trump and Cold War dead-enders Bolton, Pompeo, and Abrams are doing to Iran and Venezuela? They are provoking the regimes in both countries, hoping and praying that their officials screw up and provide a pretext for flattening them and their citizenry with a carpet-bombing campaign, just as they did with Iraq and Afghanistan. Or they’re hoping to hoodwink the American people into believing some false pretext for another war of aggression against either country or both of them, such as finding Saddam Hussein’s long-lost WMDs hidden in Iran or Venezuela or both.

Make no mistake about it: If Iran and Venezuela had nukes, Trump would be falling in love with Venezuelan socialist strongman Nicholas Maduro and Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khamenei too, attending love-fest summits with them, and promising them beautiful condo projects,. And he would prevent the Cold War interventionists with whom he has surrounded himself and who now appear to be in charge of U.S. foreign policy from interfering with both relationships, just as he has done with respect to his relationship with Kim.

In fact, ask yourself: Why wouldn’t Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, or any other independent Third World regime that refuses to bend the knee to the all-powerful U.S. Empire not want to acquire nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons are the only thing that deters the U.S. Empire from initiating a regime-change operation agaInst any Third World nation that behaves independently or levels a modicum of criticism against U.S. officials. The U.S. Empire’s foreign policy of empire, interventionism, regime-change, assassinations, and coups is what gives rise to the desire for nuclear weapons on the part of independent Third World countries.

The best thing the American people could ever do for themselves and for the people of the world is to restore our nation’s founding principles of a limited-government republic and a non-interventionist foreign policy, which necessarily entails the dismantling, not the reform, of America’s national-security state governmental apparatus. That is a key not only to the restoration of our freedom here at home but also to a more peaceful and harmonious world........https://www.fff.org/2019/05/16/iran-venezuela-and-north-koreas-nukes/