Live data from Hacker News

Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

oalexanderdk.substack.com

291–300 of 439 posts

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#291
post #241

Hersh is in the difficult position of needing to neither confirm nor deny his sources, because if he doesn't then no future internal leaker will talk to him: we're not going to find out "how he knows" because it kills his business. He's also like John Pilger and Glenn Greenwald very definitely bringing a specific world view to the table. Like the other two, that means his editorial has a direction. I don't personally…

Hersh also has a history of breaking stories that are true, like the My Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, and other things. This counterpoint writer has none of the yank that Hersh has. Has Hersh slipped in his age? I don’t know. But this nameless IC cutout who wrote this story has basically no credibility. Why should anyone listen to him?

Abu Ghraib was an important story, and Hersh's last real story. The cheese subsequently slipped off his cracker. The Vatican does not in fact secretly control US Special Forces Command.

The good thing about this story is that you don't have to "believe" the author. It makes a series of falsifiable arguments about Hersh's story. Which of them do you contest, and why? This isn't a duel of credibilities.

This whole "IC cutout" thing says more about how you're looking at this issue than it does about the story itself.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#292
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in the last decade he's kinda blown it with multiple claims in Syria. Statements that are either unbelievable, undocumented and easily could be (like building locations), or basically falsified have really brought down his trust. Even if he's just getting bad information rather than coming from a particular angle, his readers deserve better vetting of the material. At some point it feels like he's being driven…

Haha, Bellingcat is your source vs a Pulitzer Prize journalist who may have fallen out of favor with a particular crowd, and you want the comment to be taken seriously? Not all us drink Koolaid. Here's a link to your link - about Brown Moses, an unemployed man from Leicester, England ( https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/bellingcat_brown_moses.... )

Good idea, judge based only on the name of the source, completely captured by narrative and unable to make decisions based any measurable facts they present. Pick a football team and cheer them to victory for surely that's the right way to understand the world, the economy, and geopolitics!

Don't read anything from the London Review of Books either since you might not agree with them. It's scary to hear new things.

I'll note that you didn't dispute that chlorine gas was used (eg in Yepres and many other times) and killed thousands in the great war nor that Seymour said it couldn't (there's video). Do you like it when your team slaughters innocents? Tryout Kiwi Farms.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not what they did, according to Hersh! It's not a minor gap in the story! Hersh claims the Norwegian Navy allocated an Alta-class minesweeper to the task of operating as a diving platform for American divers. You can't say "well, maybe that's not what happened then!" and act like the story is intact. If major details in the story are false, that's a big deal! You can absolutely still believe the US blew up the p…

> independently and axiomatically derived culpability > ever since 2006, been a nutbag

I really needed to know if tptacek was somehow mixing in some ad homimem attacks to discredit the author.

Two things I found interesting that I didn't know and found fascinating is that western countries would give the US in modern age jurisdiction over their territory. I get how it happens in Japan or Germany that were occupied due to their role in WWII.

It's also worth noting that part of the reason why Iran had a revolution was especially due to the fact that there was no jurisdiction over crimes Americans did.

But why would a western nation sign such a thing in 2022?

I think we can also agree that if they had any hint of Russia doing it(which is an absurd theory to begin with given that they ARE the tap), it would have been blowing into extraordinary proportions. They fact that the story quietly died is a quite telling by itself.

Let's also remember for a moment that both NS1 and 2 were actually built on request of the Germans.

Let's also not forget that there had been an incident with an explosive laden drone in 2015 near the pipeline. Previous discussion from HN

https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/explosive-laden-drone-...

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The fear, however, was that the bombs wouldn’t work if they stayed in the water too long. This is actually what happened with two of the bombs. > Seriously? The world's largest military hasn't developed explosive devices that are sufficiently waterproof? The OP might be referring to the triggering mechanism running out of battery and thus unable to receive the triggering signal, rather than to water exposure.

Perhaps, but again I'd posit that the world's most advanced military wouldn't mind slapping on a few more batteries, just to be sure.

Or a drone submarine or some crap like that. The problem with this story is that there are so many ways any capable not-even-super-power could do something like this. There’s also all the 4D chess about Putin keeping his oligarchs trapped since they can’t sell the nation’s largest commodity. Or that’s what insert country with special forces wants you to think.

It’s possible Hersh is 100% correct but without anyone else corroborating him we’re just left with speculation.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#296
post #241

Hersh is in the difficult position of needing to neither confirm nor deny his sources, because if he doesn't then no future internal leaker will talk to him: we're not going to find out "how he knows" because it kills his business. He's also like John Pilger and Glenn Greenwald very definitely bringing a specific world view to the table. Like the other two, that means his editorial has a direction. I don't personally…

Hersh also has a history of breaking stories that are true, like the My Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, and other things. This counterpoint writer has none of the yank that Hersh has. Has Hersh slipped in his age? I don’t know. But this nameless IC cutout who wrote this story has basically no credibility. Why should anyone listen to him?

Credit for Abu Ghraib should go to the person who told him about it, not to him. Did he do anything special there?

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#297

I've read both this paper and the original Seymour Hersh article. I found the abundance of details a bit weird, to be honest, but not enough to discount the credibility of the thesis. On the other hand, this paper is poorly constructed, mostly using straw man techniques and sleight of hands to discredit the original paper. I think it's doing the opposite of what it is trying to achieve, adding free publicity on top.

I don't know about you, but I find these "pro-West" side to be quite specious in their arguments. What idiot really believes that Russia of all people would want to kill their own golden goose ? The argument these geniuses are implicitly making is that either Russians (or more euphemistically "Putin") is a raging lunatic, or that their readers so utterly dim-witted that they'll believe any shit that they'll spin. OTO…

I'm not sure if the alternative to Hersh being wrong is that Russia did it

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#298
The amount of pro-Russia apologia on this thread is pretty incredible. There are a number of salient points raised in this article discussing how details of the original article are implausible. However instead of addressing any of these points or inconsistencies directly, people simply say this rebuttal is "non-credible." I had expected more from this readership.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#299

One interesting thing about the Jens Stoltenberg. It’s Thorvald Stoltenberg, his father who was defense minister and foreign minister after 1979 as well as was a high level official in the Norwegian state and defense department during the last years of the Vietnam conflict. Confusion but basically father and son.

You would think that for releasing a major story like this that Hersh would be trying to get his details correct. Confusing father and son is not a negligible error.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#300
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not give him the benefit of the doubt, and I have a hard time understanding why anybody would; there is more than ample reason to doubt any story he runs. I can't imagine a credible source working with him, so far has the presumption of accuracy been shifted on his work over the last 10 years. That's why a famous journalist is reduced to running stories from unnamed (and implausible) sources in the first plac…

[flagged]

A green account name accusing the #1 (#2?) poster on this site of being an op? Is this reverse psychology?
Post reply on HN