In which the United States secretary of State discloses that he really isn’t all that up to speed on what’s going on in the world.

ABC News journalist Martha Raddatz asked Kerry, who was in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, about the execution of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s uncle. “I mean it really reminded me of — of a video that we saw of Saddam Hussein doing the same thing, having people plucked out of an audience and people sitting there sweating and nobody daring to move or do anything,” said Kerry, according to the transcript provided by ABC News. “Um, this is the nature of this ruthless, horrendous dictatorship and of his insecurities. And — and I think we — we need to factor that into the urgency of getting China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, all of us, uh, to stay on the same page and to put as much effort into the denuclearization as possible. To have a nuclear weapon, potentially, in the hands of somebody like Kim Jong In — Jun — just becomes even more unacceptable.”

Video at the link.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests. Two of those have occurred since 2009, with the most recent happening February 12, 2013. John Kerry was confirmed as secretary of state on January 29, 2013. The North Korean nuclear test, which occurred a couple of week after Kerry’s confirmation, demonstrated that North Korea has been able to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to fit as a warhead on a missile. Kim Jong Un had been North Korea’s dictator since 2011.

Kerry’s gaffe, if that’s what it is, isn’t on the level of potato vs potatoe. It’s on the level of having America’s top diplomat dealing with one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods, and not knowing the very first thing about his job.

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