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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

The blog post was submitted earlier today but flagged to death for some reason, even though the White House deemed it important enough to respond to themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305

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> My Lai was first revealed to the American public on November 13, 1969—almost two years after the incident—when Hersh published a story through the Dispatch News Service. The article threatened to undermine the U.S. war effort and severely damage the Nixon presidency. Inside the White House, officials privately discussed how to contain the scandal. On November 21, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger emphasized that the White House needed to develop a "game plan", to establish a "press policy", and maintain a "unified line" in its public response to the incident. The White House established a "My Lai Task Force" whose mission was to "figure out how best to control the problem", to make sure that administration officials "all don't go in different directions" when discussing the incident, and to "engage in dirty tricks". These included discrediting key witnesses and questioning Hersh's motives for releasing the story. What soon followed was a public relations offensive by the administration designed to shape how My Lai would be portrayed in the press and understood among the American public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre

The problem is that this author now writes these conspiracy theory pieces with ZERO evidence.

The Lai massacre was well documented - Hersh was a photographer.

These recent conspiracy theory articles he publishes have ZERO evidence. This is just the most recent of many.

That's true. I don't think we will find out truth about this any soon, while all the conspiracy theories and speculations flying around.

Given your learning about this, who do you think is most possible author of this explosion?

I think speculation with literally no evidence is pointless at best, and actively harmful at worst, so we should really hold off on making guesses based on effectively nothing.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Hersh also referred to some of my friends as a “JSOC assassination squad” controlled by Cheney.

In light of him making these claims, I’m gonna believe the White House.

FYI - there absolutely was an approved "Disposition Matrix" which included assassination targets, some of which (like Anwar Al-Awlaqi) were American citizens.[1]

That's not a conspiracy theory.

[1] archive - https://archive.is/mfa9W | original - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-i...

It was flagged for being misleading and conspiratorial. There's literally zero evidence in the article. Also, the White House did not deem it "important", it deemed it to be circulating widely across social media despite factual inaccuracies and zero evidence.

Seymour Hersh is notorious for his anti-American conspiracy theories. He leverages his Pulitzer Prize from the Vietnam War (which he mentions at every turn) to present these ridiculous theories with literally zero evidence.

He's promised evidence "coming soon" on a number of occasions to prove his conspiracy theories, and nothing ever comes.

Isn't this the same Seymour Hersh who we have to thank for exposing the torture at Abu Ghraib and the secret post-9/11 US assassination program?

Your take seems disingenuous.

So he's like the Adam Schiff of journalists?

Because Hacker News isn't a world politics website unless those topics intersect with technology. If I want general news about the war in Ukraine and related geopolitics, I'll go read the Times or the Post.

Which is also, by the way, why I'm flagging this.

Boo.

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