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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Be specific. Which of the arguments in this do you find "poorly constructed"?

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 this operation, from the way it is described by Hersh and his source, it appears that the CIA and entire interagency group were unaware of the fact that the Nord Stream pipelines were in fact pipelines.

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 allocating a minesweeper, a large ship that is certainly tracked by the Russian military, to serve as a diving platform for a bunch of EC-UBA divers? Why wouldn't they use a civilian ship instead?

Instead of getting lost in minutia, can you explain why Biden, Nuland, Blinken and the rest of the neocon and lib imperialist gang would go on record about getting rid of NS1 and NS2 and then deny they had anything to do with it?

It's not "minutia". These are the details of the story Hersh chose to tell.

It's not a minor question! Implicating the Norwegian Navy drastically increases the number of people that need to keep this secret. Using a warship drastically increases the scrutiny applied to the ship.

I'm a bit confused, do you have some personal relationship to the author? Or why do you get personally offended when people question (not attack) the author of this particular substack?

NATO had plenty of big navy drills around the area last year. Who would complain about NATO ships in the area? Russia? Why do you even get hung up on that point?

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_196240.htm?selectedL...

tptacek, you still haven't explained how Biden, Nuland, Sullivan and Blinken are all on video saying that NS pipelines will be destroyed. Why are you so heavily invested in this and why are you defending this insane criminal cabal that is pushing us into WW3?

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 they'll claim we're doing it to ourselves. Same "logic".

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.

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

It doesn't do that at all if it's false in all its particulars. You need to separate the idea that the US is behind this sabotage from the idea that Hersh is a kook. Both things can be true at the same time!

What are the chances that Hersh made up the whole thing? What are the chances that his source is just completely faking him out and he doesn’t know better? If Putin had threatened to “end” some US internet cable to Norway, would anyone be doubting the nature of that threat if the cable suddenly blew up?

The chances that somebody made this whole story up are very high, a near certainty.

Even after I point out your "reasoning" system and its flaws, you come right out the gate with "CIA approved sources". Are you even capable of anything other than bashing the source?

Thank you for calling out the OSINTbros! They're insufferable and until now, I didn't know what to call them. Much appreciated.

Biden is literally on video promising that these pipelines would be destroyed, so there is that.

Not sure you'd be downvoted for a clear and definite fact?

> 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.

No, it's not a no brainer: it's US divers either way, according to Hersh. See? None of this makes sense.

> it runs seven hundred and fifty miles under the Baltic Sea.

That's not a realistic measurement. Did you mean the length? The deepest part of the Baltic Sea is 459 meters deep. The ocean's deepest point is roughly 7 miles deep.

The length, is the point.

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