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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

#111

Post by FollowingTheDao »

Wow...what a brilliant piece of propaganda.

"I am unsure as to why all the intelligence officials in the initial planning meetings for the mission felt that the only possible way to sabotage the pipeline would be at the short section directly bordering Russia, instead of the large section in more favorable waters."

I can think of one reason; to make it look more likely that Russia did it.

And why oh why would Norway help??? I'll give you 263 billion reasons...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-16/norway-s-...

But no where doe the writer mention why Russia would do this to themselves.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#112

Post by croes »

DeLeeuw wrote: post #54
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.…

I agree with you, but I would take Ukraine off the list, although they had a strong motive. Ukraine's strategic cornerstone is international relations, without which they cannot win the war. Ukraine would never risk upsetting Germany, the EU's biggest economy, with such a drastic operation.

How many people do you need to blast a pipeline?

Don't have to be in line with the government of a country.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#113

Post by raphlinus »

billjings wrote: post #51
pdog wrote: post #46

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 fu…

"The criticism is bad, therefore the claim must be true" certainly sounds like a rhetorical fallacy to me. Does it have a name?

It's an instance of "argument from fallacy." This whole comment section is like a zoo of logical fallacies, with golden oldies such as ad hominem (both sides), false equivalence, and of course both-siderism well represented.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#114

Post by croes »

JackFr wrote: post #41
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.

Maybe, maybe not

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34744778

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#115

Post by waffleiron »

billjings wrote: post #51
pdog wrote: post #46

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 fu…

"The criticism is bad, therefore the claim must be true" certainly sounds like a rhetorical fallacy to me. Does it have a name?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#116

Post by marcusverus »

abracadaniel wrote: post #67
fakethenews2022 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until someone else takes credit for it, I'll take President Joe Biden's threat as evidence. Video link: https://youtube.com/shorts/FVbEoZXhCrM?feature=share

He said that in the context of sanctions, and which did end up shutting it down long before it was blown up. It only appears to be a threat of destruction retroactively because it was later blown up. There were no articles claiming he was threatening to blow it up at the time. Everyone knew the context was with regards to sanctions at the time.

> He said that in the context of sanctions

Do you have a different transcript or something? There's nothing in the video that provides such a context.

Regardless, "There will be no more Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it" is a weird way to threaten sanctions, don't you think?

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#117

Post by mopsi »

ALittleLight wrote: post #69
mopsi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

What? You could repair the damage to the pipeline. If someone could replace Putin by promising to sell gas to the Germans, the fact that the pipeline is currently damaged would not be an obstacle. It's also not the case that Putin needs false flag terrorism. For one, he is already in power and has already started the war. Two, if he needed an example of US or Ukrainian forces blowing something up to galvanize his pos…

It was damaged beyond repair, certainly beyond a quick repair. If the plan with gas extortion was to break the will of Europe over this winter, then no alternative to Putin could offer any relief after it was blown up, decreasing the value of backchannel negotiations.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#118

Post by edenceover »

AlanYx wrote: post #80

There may be an incorrect statement regarding the Norwegian P-8 in the linked article. The author states that that "they won’t enter into active service until later this year", but the source the author links to doesn't actually make that claim. All it says is that the P-3s will keep flying until sometime in 2023, when the "P-8 is ready to take over". I don't think that implies that Norway doesn't already have some P…

> I would like to believe that this is possible within a few months. Setting a specific date is difficult. But we are now trying to qualify the P-8 aircraft and crews for operational service from the end of the first quarter of 2023, confirms Rolf Folland, head of the Air Force to TV 2.

Translated from this piece published in November 2022: https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/innenriks/settes-i-beredskap-rask...

So the planes were not in operational service at that time of the explosion.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#119

Post by smcl »

DeLeeuw wrote: post #44
rexxxmi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems to me equally likely he's saying they'd pressure Germany to not use it or introduce sanctions (to bring an end to Nordstream 2, as a source of foreign currency for Russia and as leverage over the EU). Additionally wasn't Nordstream 2 not yet operational, and mostly Nordstream 1 that was sabotaged?

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#120

Post by ClarityJones »

aredox wrote: post #32
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…

The source is wrong on very basic details. And the big picture of the story is nonsensical: 1) this is a very very very secret operation that Congress shouldn't be informed about, but a shitton of services - including foreign countries - were involved 2) they laid the mines during... A very public and documented military exercise. They certainly couldn't do it from a nondescript modified fishing vessel, no, they had…

These errors largely sound like obfuscation... like a potentially true narrative with the names and places changed:

- Instead of revealing the fishing vessel, he describes a vessel that it couldn't have been.

- Giving the real timing would expose the vessel, so he gives timing that wouldn't have worked as a placeholder.

- Too many people were involved, because only a subset were actually involved - or maybe even just an analogous group.

Hersh eliminates the intelligence value by obfuscating exactly who did what and how, but provides lay readers (to whom the specific details don't matter) a story that conveys a general sense of how the mission was achieved.

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