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688 points hunglee2 | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mmastrac ◴[] No.34713024[source]
It's a great story, but it's all unsourced and could be a decent Tom Clancy story at best. You could probably write a similar one with Russia or German agents as the key players and be just as convincing.

The only anchor in reality appears to be Biden suggesting that they knew how to take it out which seems like a pretty weak place to build a large story.

What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".

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drewda ◴[] No.34716271[source]
Seymour Hersh has decades of credibility from reporting the My Lai Massacre to the abuses at Abu Graib.

But he does often rely on sources who remain anonymous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Use_of_anonymous...

I did find it interesting in that Wikipedia article to read that The New Yorker's editor insists on knowing the identify of all of the anonymous sources that Hersh has used when his reporting is published in that magazine. That suggests to me that while Hersh can probably be generally trusted, his work is of a higher quality when it's published in an outlet like The New Yorker, as the editor-in-chief and other staff submit it to a more rigorous internal discussion. That's in comparison to probably no internal review or discussion by Substack.

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slantedview ◴[] No.34717161[source]
Biden stated last year: "If Russia invades [Ukraine] there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." [1] This was a clear threat, clear as day, that the US could destroy Nordstream. It should surprise nobody that the US was involved.

Since Nordstream was destroyed amidst public pressure from US energy companies who wanted to takeover the European energy market, the US has become the world's leading exporter of liquid natural gas, Europeans are paying record natural gas prices, and US energy companies are reporting record profits. Again, the relationship between these things should surprise nobody.

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/08/bidens-bi...

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coffeebeqn ◴[] No.34717353[source]
It’s not out of the realm of possibility but that statement is hardly an admission of future sabotage. I would imagine the US has more tools than deep sea bombing to convince their allies. Very high risk operation
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1. slantedview ◴[] No.34717390[source]
Sure, a threat is not an admission of guilt. But I think most people were unaware of this statement, and how aggressive the US' posture towards the pipeline was, which is important context for this article.
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2. coffeebeqn ◴[] No.34718078[source]
They must have not been paying attention. Trump was very vocal against it and was laughed at by the genius German technocrats. The Obama admin was also against it
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3. miguelazo ◴[] No.34729633[source]
More likely they were listening, but continued to pursue the path that was in Germany’s national interest. German voters do not care about helping maintain US hegemony; they care about economic stability and energy security. It will be interesting to see what happens in German domestic politics as more evidence emerges that its supposed ally carried out industrial sabotage against it. The rest of Europe’s voters will also take note.