“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

All: Whether he is right or not or one likes him or not, Hersh reporting on this counts as significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), so I've turned off the flags on this submission.

If you're going to comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidlelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." We don't want political or nationalistic flamewar here, and any substantive point can be made without it.

If anyone else had written this, would it be significant?

Wouldn't it just be written off as a conspiracy theory that provides little to no evidence for its claims?

If the only thing that gets this on HN is Seymour Hersh's reputation (which has lately become somewhat questionable) then you might want to reconsider. Plus, the quality of the comments has not been very good so far.

If you could you humor me: if he came out saying Russians blew up the pipeline, would you have the same stance?

These tensions have been brewing between NATO (mostly America) and Russia for at least a decade. It's unfortunate that the situation escalated in Ukraine though, which AFAIK is the victim in the scheming and plotting of those two powers.

I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it seems like that's the only thing people are focusing on because it makes the situation simple for them, and it's easiest to have a single villain and the rest are the good guys.

I assume most people offended by this submission here are American (or at least heavily support America) and want to think of their current government/country as the good guys.

I don't think there's any good guys in this situation.

Nothing would be easier than to say "of course we would have the same stance" but I don't want to give you quite that lazy a reply. Your question has too many counterfactual layers to backpropagate an answer through. For example, I doubt that Hersh would publish it in that case. The Hershness of a story depends on it being a blockbuster counter-thing.

Edit: oops, I missed that your question wasn't to me. Sorry!

Saying what amounts to ‘we’d never be in that position’ comes across as pretty evasive.

Also saying Hersh only writes this kind of thing supports the idea that Hersh is biased enough to be taken for a ride by a source with an agenda.

Ok, if that was too evasive: yes, of course we would have the same stance.