WASHINGTON — Former senior U.S. officials expressed concerns Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has "vacated" some of America's key military deterrence assets in the Indo-Pacific amid the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran despite growing Chinese threats in what it calls a "priority" theater. Their remarks came amid reports that Washington has moved parts of its THAAD missile defense system in South Korea to the Middle East, and is dispatching over 2,000 U.S. Marines of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in Japan to the volatile region, while there is no operational U.S. aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific. "A very large component of the American military capability that is there to deter in the Indo-Pacific has been vacated," one former U.S. official said in a meeting with reporters. "Some of the Marines have left ... and some of the capabilities that have been withdrawn from Korea after painstakingly putting them in there. So deterrence has been shifted at a time that China is launching an unprecedented number of sorties around Taiwan," he added. He was appare