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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What does “IC cutout” say about a Marine who is now a private citizen. How am I looking at this, precisely?

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#332
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and you know what all those things have in common? Actual evidence which corresponds to real events, and multiple sources confirming that they happened. What Hersh's suppositions have is a stunning lack of verifiable evidence and observably factually incorrect assertions (as in the case of his articles on Nordstream).

Saying someone's claims don't (yet) have the kind of evidence you demand is pretty different from calling someone crazy (and in so doing implying that those claims are not worth the consideration of the sane). The only thing your bullet points were doing is suggesting "look at the delusions of this maniac! He can't be trusted because of them". But because the completely insane shit in my list turned out to be true, H…

Over 10 years. It's one thing to have a story out there no one can prove, it's quite another to have been continuously publishing things you can't prove and which no one else can find any evidence of despite looking.

There are multiple factual claims about verifiable vessels, planes and movements being made and none of them are true.

All your saying is, despite obvious factual inconsistencies in the parts of the story which should be publicly verifiable, you've already got a conclusion you like. Which is what everyone's doing because the real big secret is "it was Russia" is a boring conclusion that doesn't move clicks.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#333
Ed Crooks, formerly of the FT and now at WoodMac had this to say in his energy pulse this week.

> While there is clearly still a great deal that we don’t know about this incident, one crucial aspect of Hersh’s story — the supposed US motive for sabotaging the pipelines — seems flawed. He argues that “President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponise natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions” in Europe, and was determined to stop that. But by September 2022, when the blasts happened, Russia had already stopped flows through Nord Stream, claiming it was unable to operate the pipeline because of the West’s sanctions on critical equipment that required maintenance. There was consensus among commentators and politicians that flows were unlikely to resume.

> Blowing up Nord Stream did not really change the outlook for European gas markets. One thing it did do was provide a more solid justification for Gazprom’s argument that it was unable to supply contracted volumes to Germany. And that is something that will weigh in future arbitration of damages claims from European utilities.

https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/us-oil-demand-on-course...

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#334
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're response to the question of logical consistency in the Hersh story is "who cares about consistency, I don't like Biden or the US so it must be true, anyone who disagrees is 'heavily vested in an insane criminal cabal'". Why are you so heavily invested? Answer the question

These people are on record for threatening the pipeline. They had the motive and the means. So why should we disbelieve their threats? Sy Hersh is the most trusted living investigative reporter today. I'll take his word over some OSINTbro shill any day of the week. And to claim that Russians destroyed their own pipeline is ludicrous. Once they start cutting our undersea cables and destroying our pipelines, I guess th…

You're entire system of reasoning comes down to choosing what to believe based on how much you like the person saying it. And when you don't like the person saying it you can't even say their name without inserting a stupid insult like "criminal cabal" and "OSINTbro shill". You systematically sidestep all questions on matters of fact in favor of naked tribal social reasoning. Even in this discourse you opted to reason about the motivation semantics of the GP, speculating outloud that they are "invested" in defending a certain position, rather than directly addressing the arguments they made for that position. Your follow up comment is based 100% in elaborating on which sources you think are more reputable and 0% in analysis of what these sources are actually claiming.

Did you just get here from Twitter?

I don't care if its Hersh or otherwise, if someone says 1+1=3 then what they are saying doesn't add up. Debunking the Hersh story isn't a claim about Russia doing it to themselves, nor even a rejection of the hypothesis that the US did it. It merely refutes the Hersh story as evidence one way or the other.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#335

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.

What I like about audience here is - majority still express critical thinking while assessing events. If you are looking forward to primitive discussions "Russia bad US good" based on emotions, you may look to other communities, there are aplenty.

[dead]

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally every paragraph. Let’s start with this completely unsubstantiated and incoherent section: > The US Air Force officials reportedly proposed “dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely”. One 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. During the supposed initial planning of…

I don't think you've picked up the argument being made there, which is that, being a pipeline, the Norwegian Navy wasn't constrained to one particular spot to disable it: it runs seven hundred and fifty miles under the Baltic Sea. The author of this post is saying Hersh doesn't know what a pipeline, not that the USG doesn't. Try another paragraph. Let's interrogate it. For instance: why is the Norwegian Navy allocati…

> Why wouldn't they use a civilian ship instead?

US navel divers on a civilian ship is the USA going to WW3 with Russia.

They know the real story will come out, perhaps within a day of the incident.

Could they have trained Norwegian divers to use US tech off a civilian ship, maybe, that is a lot of added complexity and Russia 100% knows the US did this already.

This is about the real story being leaked, USA and Russia need the Norwegian Navy in it. Just like the USA needs the Ukraine to drive their tanks.

This part is a no brainer.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#338
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You repeat “the worlds most advanced military “ like it makes them infallible.

I didn't repeat it :)

First time I said:

"World's largest military"

Second time was "most advanced".

I'm not saying they're infallible, but they're not exactly the Keystone cops, either.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#339
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are on record for threatening the pipeline. They had the motive and the means. So why should we disbelieve their threats? Sy Hersh is the most trusted living investigative reporter today. I'll take his word over some OSINTbro shill any day of the week. And to claim that Russians destroyed their own pipeline is ludicrous. Once they start cutting our undersea cables and destroying our pipelines, I guess th…

You're entire system of reasoning comes down to choosing what to believe based on how much you like the person saying it. And when you don't like the person saying it you can't even say their name without inserting a stupid insult like "criminal cabal" and "OSINTbro shill". You systematically sidestep all questions on matters of fact in favor of naked tribal social reasoning. Even in this discourse you opted to reaso…

Hersh's report adds up more than "Russia did it" nonsense that's coming out of CIA-approved sources.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#340
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Recursively applied, almost all journalism based on Whistle-blower or off the record falls to this complaint.

Yes. Also, we give baristas all the credit for things coffee farmworkers did.
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