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Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

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Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#41

Post by JackFr »

htwaterx wrote: post #17

While interesting, the author appears to be nitpicking. It does not really refute Hersh's story, because these minor inconsistencies appear in any news article, including the NYT. It is irrelevant whether Hersh gets all details right, the important thing is whether his source is correct on the big picture or not. It seems to me that the veracity of Hersh's claims cannot be decided by textual analysis, but rather by a…

Asserting that

“[Jens Steltonberg] was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since.”

when he was actually born in 1959 is not a small thing. It’s simply making things up.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#42

Post by mopsi »

ALittleLight wrote: post #22
ajross wrote: post #2

It does seem like what happened is that Hersh got a legitimate source (probably in the US or Norwegian intelligence community) who was willing to talk about an existing plan for this kind of operation, and then spun it into a story just declaring that it happened that way. In point of fact probably every major player in the region had a plan like this. Nord Stream 2 was a huge football for everyone with interest. We…

I think it's overwhelmingly obvious that the US, or US-aligned forces, were responsible. It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this. US has capable forces in the region at the time, a clear motive (remove the temptation for Germany to use the pipeline). The other possibilities are Russia, they could just turn off the pipeline rather than blow it up, Germany, they could just turn off their end of the p…

> It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this.

Putin. Blow up the pipeline so no-one can offer cheap gas in exchange for being recognized as the next legitimate leader of Russia behind his back. It's one of the simplest explanations and falls into the overall pattern. False-flag terrorism[1] is how Putin got into power in the first place.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#43

Post by aredox »

createdapril24 wrote: post #7

I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends". I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however.…

Russia also has that capability.

And one of the pipelines remains operational.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#44

Post by DeLeeuw »

rexxxmi wrote: post #13
createdapril24 wrote: post #7

I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends". I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however.…

Until someone else can corroborate Hersh's story, or Hersh provides hard evidence, this is whole thing is a nothing burger.

The US was always opposed to Nord Stream and for good reasons. I'm in fact glad it's gone.

Many people already speculated it was the US, because Biden himself literally says "we will bring an end to it": https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8

With a smirk. Even when pressed how he is going to do it.

For me, Hersh' story is the secondary corroboration.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#46

Post by pdog »

The sheer number of rhetorical fallacies employed in the opening of this "takedown" inclines me to believe that Hersh's reporting is a largely accurate and truthful account.

For example, stating that you could write "an entire post on the reasons why sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail" is a clear-cut appeal to ridicule[1] fallacy with no further elaboration.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#47

Post by aredox »

swader999 wrote: post #40

There was a P8 dropping a sonar bouy a few hours before the blast. Monkeywerx on YouTube has a few videos on that. Then there's Biden explicitly stating it would be no more and they would end it, also on YouTube.

Wrong, it made a pass after the explosion. For a good reason.

But here you are proclaiming that they used a plane, with its transponder on, to activate the bomb. A very very very secret operation indeed. Cloak and daggers! So much covert.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#49

Post by aredox »

notinfuriated wrote: post #4

While the Seymour Hersh story seems unbelievable to me, so does the initial explanation that was being thrown around, that Russia did this as sabotage, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/nord-stream-... . The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines. (To use that language, nearly anything can be a "weapon.") I'…

One of the pipelines is still undamaged. Why would the US be this sloppy?

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#50

Post by nkurz »

Good piece, and I think he points out some clear problems with the exact events that Hersh describes. I think the lack of a verifiable path for either the ship carrying divers or for the plane that supposedly dropped off the sonobuoy do make it less likely that Hersh's version actually happened. The author's conclusion is that this is because Hersh's source was making things up, but I think it's also compatible with someone who heard about the plan but didn't fully understand it. Or possibly, heard about it before it was finalized. Hopefully more details will come out.

His closing question is "Why leave one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines intact"? I haven't seen it discussed much, but apparently there actually were 4 leaks, with one pipeline being damaged twice. One possible explanation would be that this was a mistake in the execution by whoever did this, with one pipeline somehow getting two explosives planted. Here's a Sept 22 article about the discover of the 4th leak: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fourth-leak-found-no...

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