US missile defense shield to counter NKorea threat

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  Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Hagel warned of sharply deeper cuts to personnel, health care and weapons systems across his department, in order to put the brakes on spiraling costs and reshape the military for leaner budgets and new challenges. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)The Associated Press

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  Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Hagel warned of sharply deeper cuts to personnel, health care and weapons systems across his department, in order to put the brakes on spiraling costs and reshape the military for leaner budgets and new challenges. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)The Associated Press

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WASHINGTON –  The Pentagon said Wednesday it was deploying a missile defense shield to Guam to protect the U.S. and its allies in the region in response to increasingly hostile rhetoric from North Korea. The North renewed its threat to launch a nuclear attack on the United States.

The threat issued by the General Staff of the Korean People's Army capped a week of psychological warfare and military muscle moves by both sides that have rattled the region.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it will deploy a land-based, high-altitude missile defense system to Guam to strengthen the Asia-Pacific region's protections against a possible attack.

Pyongyang, for its part, said that America's ever-escalating hostile policy toward North Korea "will be smashed" by the North's nuclear strike and the "merciless operation" of its armed forces.

"The U.S. had better ponder over the prevailing grave situation," said the translated statement, which was issued before the Pentagon announced plans to send a missile defense shield to Guam.

The Pentagon had no immediate reaction to the latest statement, but earlier Wednesday Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel labeled North Korea's rhetoric as a real, clear danger and threat to the U.S. and its Asia-Pacific allies. And he said the U.S. is doing all it can to defuse the situation, echoing comments a day earlier by Secretary of State John Kerry.

"Some of the actions they've taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat to the interests, certainly of our allies, starting with South Korea and Japan and also the threats that the North Koreans have leveled directly at the United States regarding our base in Guam, threatened Hawaii, threatened the West Coast of the United States," Hagel said.

He said he believes that the U.S. has had a "measured, responsible, serious responses to those threats."

Deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System is the latest step the U.S. has taken to bolster forces in the region in a far-reaching show of force aimed at countering the North Korean threat.

In recent months, North Korea has taken a series of actions Washington deemed provocative, including an underground nuclear test in February and a rocket launch in December that put a satellite into space and demonstrated mastery of some of the technologies needed to produce a long-range nuclear missile. Then, several weeks ago, the North threatened to pre-emptively attack the U.S.

In response, the Pentagon announced it would enhance missile defenses based on the U.S. West Coast, and it highlighted the deployment of B-52 and B-2 bombers, as well as two F-22 stealth fighters, to South Korea as part of an annual military exercise.

As the exchange of rhetoric grew, U.S. officials this week said the Navy would keep the USS Decatur, a destroyer armed with missile defense systems, near the Korean peninsula for an unspecified period of time. Another destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, was shifted to the waters off the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula.

Tensions have flared many times in the six decades since a truce halted the 1950-53 Korean War, but the stakes are higher now that a defiant North Korea appears to have moved closer to building a nuclear bomb that could not only threaten the South and other U.S. allies in Asia but possibly, one day, even reach U.S. territory.

Even without nuclear arms, the communist North poses enough artillery within range of Seoul to devastate large parts of the capital before U.S. and South Korea could fully respond. The U.S. has about 28,500 troops in the South, and it could call on an array of air, ground and naval forces to reinforce the peninsula from elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific.

U.S. officials have said that the Pentagon's military response to Pyongyang's threats has so far been aimed more at assuring South Korea and other allies in the region that America is committed to their security. U.S. military leaders also have said that despite the escalating rhetoric, they have seen nothing to suggest that North Korea is making any military moves to back up its threats.

Hagel told an audience at the National Defense University that there is a path to peace on the troubled Korean peninsula, but it doesn't include making nuclear threats or taking provocative actions.

The land-based THAAD missile defense system includes a truck-mounted launcher, tracking radar, interceptor missiles, and an integrated fire control system. The Pentagon said the system will boost defenses for American citizens in Guam, a U.S. territory, and U.S. forces stationed there.

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Arias defense works to restore expert credibility

PHOENIX –  Jodi Arias' defense attorney worked Wednesday to undo any damage to the credibility of an expert witness who diagnosed the defendant with post-traumatic stress disorder and amnesia after a withering cross-examination that called into question his techniques and testing procedures.

Psychologist Richard Samuels testified for a fourth day Wednesday after telling jurors he diagnosed Arias with PTSD and dissociative amnesia, which explains why she can't remember much from the day she killed her lover. Samuels said he met with Arias a dozen times for more than 30 hours over three years while she was jailed.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez previously seized on multiple lies Arias told Samuels throughout the process of his evaluation, at one point getting the psychologist to acknowledge that he should have re-administered at least one test he used to come to his PTSD diagnosis. Martinez questioned how Samuels could have come to any definitive conclusion for a diagnosis based upon Arias' lies.

Samuels insisted his diagnosis was accurate.

"The process of forming a diagnosis is not a simple process," Samuels testified Wednesday. "The fact is that it's necessary to obtain information from as many different sources as you can."

Arias faces a possible death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder in the June 2008 killing of Travis Alexander in his suburban Phoenix home. Authorities say she planned the attack in a jealous rage. Arias initially told authorities she had nothing to do with it then blamed it on masked intruders. Two years after her arrest, she said it was self-defense.

Defense attorney Jennifer Willmott spent much of Wednesday questioning Samuels about his testing procedures. When Samuels initially began his evaluation of Arias, she was sticking to the intruder story.

Willmott went over each question and Arias' answers with Samuels.

"Did she think her life was in danger?" Willmott asked.

"Yes," Samuels replied.

"Did she feel helpless?" Willmott asked.

"Yes," Samuels said, explaining later that his diagnosis would have remained unchanged whether Arias was responding to the questions still telling the intruder story or claiming self-defense.

"If the answers remained yes before and yes after, would it have changed the score at all?" Willmott asked.

"No," Samuels said.

He said Arias also answered "no" to a question about whether she was having nightmares.

"This is a score where you could exaggerate if your intent was to skew the score in your favor," Samuels said.

He said the PTSD test was merely one tool used to come to his diagnosis.

"I based the information primarily on my interviews, the crime scene photographs and descriptions, interviews with family members, police reports, emails, text messages and the psychological tests," Samuels said.

Martinez had also questioned Samuels' credibility, accusing him of blurring the line between objective observer and therapist when he bought Arias a self-help book about building self-esteem.

Samuels denied the accusation.

"Is there ever blurring of the lines between evaluator and therapist?" Willmott asked Wednesday.

"There should not be," Samuels replied, explaining that sending Arias the book is not considered therapy.

Trial adjourned early on Wednesday after a woman in the gallery vomited.

Samuels was set to return to the witness stand Thursday to answer questions from jurors that will be read aloud by the judge. Arizona is one of a few states where jurors have the right to query witnesses. In most other states, it's up to the judge to determine whether to allow it.

Alexander suffered nearly 30 knife wounds, was shot in the head and had his throat slit before Arias dragged his body into his shower.

Arias spent 18 days on the witness stand during which she described an abusive childhood, cheating boyfriends, dead-end jobs, a shocking sexual relationship with Alexander, and her contention that he had grown physically abusive in the months leading to his death.

She said she recalls Alexander attacking her in a fury. Arias said she ran into his closet to retrieve a gun he kept on a shelf and fired in self-defense but has no memory of stabbing him.

She has acknowledged trying to clean the scene of the killing, dumping the gun in the desert and working on an alibi in an attempt to avoid suspicion. She said she was too scared and ashamed to tell the truth.

None of Arias' allegations of Alexander's violence, that he owned a gun and had sexual desires for boys, has been corroborated by witnesses or evidence. She has acknowledged lying repeatedly but insists she is telling the truth now.

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