North Korea Launches Missile over Japan
WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Just to give you a sense of the mood of what it's like to be in the city, listen for a moment. And imagine that playing every hour of every day all around the city. Back to the topic at hand, though. North Korea, by launching this missile over Japan, and not towards Guam, they were able to accomplish a number of things. They can demonstrate their technical capability, that they can put a missile over a population center and put it down safely in the ocean. But by not pointing he missile south, they avoided perhaps crossing that red line that President Trump laid out. Also noteworthy that North Korea launched a missile from their airport, from near their commercial airport here in Pyongyang, just about 20 miles from where I'm standing. It's very likely that people in some parts of the city could hear the missile launch. Normally North Korea chooses more remote locations. They might be sending a message to the U.S., John, by doing it from their airport, that they can use their mobile missile launchers, puts them in areas where there are a lot of people around and therefore pretty much eliminate a U.S. option of a preemptive strike on these areas because the humanitarian consequences would be so severe.</s>BERMAN: Yes, the civilian casualties would be enormous if you tried to take it out if it was near the airport or the city. General Hertling, of course the president says that all options are on the table. His own chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who left the White House a week ago, essentially said that's not the case. He said there's no military solution, forget it, until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons. I don't know what you're talking about. There's no military solution here. This gets to that moment. Steve Bannon, did his words undermine the president's threats, general?</s>LT. GEN. MARK  HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I think they did, John. And, primarily, what you have to understand is, there's always a military option on the table. Unfortunately in this case, it would consist of potentially a theater war with a lot of casualties. You know, you can't take the military option off the table, but there are some things, other than what Mr. Bannon might know about since he didn't have a security clearance at the end, all kinds of other techniques, asymmetric means, that you can use to try and affect this. But the problem is, I keep going back to the point, any military option would include a major theater war which would certainly affect the strategy in other places of the United States and cause us to take a look at what else we're doing in other places around the world, because it would take a lot of requirements for leadership to get the American people to support it and a lot of requirements to put alliances together to fight a war like this.</s>BERMAN: And, Will Ripley, this missile launch not just any launch. Overflying Japan is something's that hadn't happened, you know, in well over a decade. It had to be alarming for them. You know well over a million people that lived in Japan's northern island.</s>RIPLEY: Absolutely. They woke up this morning to the sound of air raid sirens and very frightening messages on their phones telling them to seek cover in sturdy buildings because North Korean missiles were approaching. The last time North Korea launched a projectile over Japan was 2009, and that was a failed satellite launch. It was actually a rocket, not a ballistic missile. Prior to that it was 1998 when North Korea launched a satellite and it flew over Okinawa, which is home, of course, to major -- the majority of U.S. military assets that are stationed in Japan, along with Yokosuka (ph) in Tokyo -- in the Tokyo area. And so, obviously, North Korea, by conducting this test in this way, they succeed in frightening a key U.S. ally, but they didn't push the United States far enough to determine that they needed to shoot this missile down and Japan didn't shoot the missile down either, even though it did fly over that northern region.</s>BERMAN: That's right, over Japan is one thing, not toward Guam, another. Will Ripley inside North Korea, thank you so much. General Hertling, great to have you with us as well. All right, this just in. We're getting a new count of the number of people in shelters in and around Houston. Seventeen thousand people now seeking shelter inside Texas. You're looking at a live shot of Houston's convention center. We're on top of all the fast-moving developments. Stay with us.