“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Where is the evidence?

The blog post is mostly a sea of text with no real citations and loose quotes. The author, though a famed journalist for his breaking of a story 50 years ago, has also made claims recently to defend dictators such as Assad; even going so far as to claim the US was going to fake Bin Laden's dead by dragging his body back to Afghanistan from Pakistan to pretend like he died in a missile strike. His reasoning for this? Well, basically apparently flying below the deck and stealth helicopters are impossible.

People need to come to grips that people can slowly become kooks over time (or maybe they were always crazy, but did one good thing and now have clout.) Snowden, Greenwald have made similar kooky remarks of late defending bad actors all over. It's bizarre, but not unusual.

The journalist also broke the Abu Ghraib story less than 20 years ago.

No he didn't, the AP did based on a whistleblower (followed by a 60 Minutes report.) He may have reported on it, but he didn't break it. He did however make a claim not reported by the anyone else that the US soldiers raped children, which no one else ever reported, then offered no evidence of said claim.

Exposing uncomfortable truths about the US/NATO dirty war in Syria hardly constitutes “defending Assad.”

Highly recommend the entire LRB series. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n01/seymour-m.-hersh/mil...

He actually did though. Saying the Syrian rebels gassed themselves (common Assad talking point [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n24/seymour-m.-hersh/who...] parroted by people like Tulsi Gabbard/Tucker/etc), and also said the Pentagon had a secret agreement with Assad and Putin to undermine Obama. He also offered absolutely no evidence of any of this.

The threats by biden and nuland count as evidence, but certainly we would like more.

I agree that it's not an extraordinary claim, given the few players with the capability and at least theoretical motives. But it's an extraordinarily detailed claim.

And it seems to hinge on a single source (is my understanding of journalism broken, aren't you supposed to have confirmation of sources?), who clearly has an agenda given this quote: "The only flaw was the decision to do it." So even if the broad strokes are true, seems weird to publish off of a single source to me.

The OPCW leaks confirmed that the “rebels” staged gas attacks. That has never been refuted by anyone— only attacks against the messengers, similar to yours.

Except the OPCW says themselves they have grounds to believe Assad did it. Any "leaks" were part of an ongoing investigation, and not conclusive. I'm absolutely baffled how naive people are in defense of people like Assad & Putin.

Do you have a source for that? Here is DW claiming he was the first one who disclosed what went on in detail:

https://www.dw.com/en/problem-is-not-interrogation-its-war-i...

> US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh disclosed the torture scandal of Abu Ghraib 10 years ago.

> He was the first to describe in detail what was happening in Abu Ghraib, quoting from the Taguba Report, a secret, internal investigation by the US army about atrocities committed against the prisoners.

The article goes on to discuss how even though second hand accounts of abuses already existed, he was the first to get access to and disclose the report, giving a detailed first party account and giving proof of chain of command involvement for the first time.

The capabilities are plenty, especially with countries around the Baltic sea, which is not very deep to begin with.

> Literally no one outside Europe and North America (or maybe Australia?) ever believed it was anyone besides USA and its vassals. Only people who are constantly dosed with USA war media bullshit consider this an "extraordinary claim". Not all of us are that foolish, however.

This is completely irrelevant. Some people in Iran and Russia think the US is run by Satan. That doesn't make it so. Being anti-US is very in vogue, but that doesn't change the fact that your post offers no evidence itself and neither does this article.

So you "believe" it was the USA based on what, again?

Sure, skepticism is warranted, as is usually the case. Those who already suspected the USA military-industrial complex of taking this action that massively benefited the USA military-industrial complex are less likely to dismiss TFA out of hand. Others will have to see a great deal more reporting, and as seen here loads of credulous fools (or impersonators of such) won't believe it even 75 years from now when we have complete FOIA documentation. [0]

However, we may make a few predictions. Over time, as more details emerge, TFA will be shown to be basically correct yet wrong in some important details. As Hersh stipulates, he relies on a single source, which source probably slants a few points in self-interest. The same apologists for imperialism seen here in high dudgeon in total denial, will over time move to more nuanced positions: "of course USA did it, but Hersh portrayed it as something USA shouldn't have done rather than something that muh security demanded! USA couldn't have known that it would lead to European penury and/or nuclear holocaust! Also he claimed that Biden made a decision, when we all know he has been non compos mentis for years... You can't take credit for being right about USA militarism all the time just because you assume it's always evil and stupid." As the avaricious crackpot realism that has pulled us so close to the brink of extinction takes over more and more Western media, we'll see far fewer independent moderation decisions like that of 'dang here today. We can be sure that phone calls have already been made.

[0] That's a joke; USA definitely won't exist 75 years from now, and this event is both contributing cause and justification.

The original investigators called BS. Then the OPCW worked to silence them and brought in chumps who would stick to the script. Their latest report only confirms that it was a coverup, doubling down on fake “evidence” provided by the white helmets. https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/02/06/in-douma-cover...

I'm not going to include "evidence" about "Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, Guatemala, Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, etc" in a four-sentence comment. It's no one's fault but your own that you are ignorant of history.