One of the ongoing pastimes inside the Pentagon is to speculate on the departure date for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
North Korea vowed Saturday to respond with "powerful nuclear deterrence" to joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises poised to begin this weekend, saying the drills amount to a provocation that would prompt "retaliatory sacred war."
North Korea threatened to mount a powerful nuclear response to upcoming joint U.S.-South Korean military drills, calling the exercises an "unpardonable" provocation on top of wrongly blaming Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean warship.
