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688 points hunglee2 | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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r721 ◴[] No.34712869[source]
>The White House on Wednesday dismissed a blog post by a U.S. investigative journalist alleging the United States was behind explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as "utterly false and complete fiction."

>...

>"This is utterly false and complete fiction," said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council. Spokespeople for the CIA and State Department said the same.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-blog-post-...

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steponlego ◴[] No.34712923[source]
The problem is they lie all day, every day, even about trivial stuff that’s easily verified. This looks more like an admission of guilt.
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gs17 ◴[] No.34712964[source]
Is there anything they could say or do, without providing undeniable evidence someone else did it that you would believe? If "we didn't do it" reads as "we did it", what do you expect them to do, not respond at all? That would be more suspicious to me.
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Apocryphon ◴[] No.34712984[source]
Sounds like they should provide undeniable evidence then!
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macintux ◴[] No.34713005[source]
Even if they had it, they likely couldn’t share it for security reasons.

And of course, proving innocence is effectively impossible without proving someone else did it.

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Apocryphon ◴[] No.34713053[source]
Sure. I'm just curious about who did it and hey if Hersh is providing one narrative, it's better than the lack of answers or even any attempt at an investigatory effort from any party, whether NATO or Russian.
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steponlego ◴[] No.34713379[source]
The lack of real concern on all parties about trying to figure out who did it is essentially proof of who did it. You have multiple PMs and FMs saying in the days afterward that "everybody knows" who did it. Who did it? If it was Russia and "everybody knew" then that'd have entered the press.
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The_Colonel ◴[] No.34714090[source]
> The lack of real concern on all parties about trying to figure out who did it is essentially proof of who did it.

Given that Nord Stream AG is (majority owned) by Russia, this would point at Russia since it's remarkably silent. But to me this doesn't make sense since I still don't understand how it benefits Russia. But perhaps it's another FSB plan which went wrong, as many others did in 2022.

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LarryMullins ◴[] No.34728063{3}[source]
Russia would probably be silent if they had proof America did it, because they don't want WW3. And America would probably be silent if they had proof Russia did it, for exactly the same reason. Neither side wants to escalate this into WW3, because then everybody loses.

It's a lot more convenient to explain that you totally would retaliate if only you knew who did it, rather than claiming you knew who did it but you're not going to retaliate anyway because you fear escalation. So everybody plays dumb.

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1. The_Colonel ◴[] No.34731153{4}[source]
> Russia would probably be silent if they had proof America did it, because they don't want WW3.

That doesn't make sense. Russia can use this as a propaganda tool without having to act on it. And it's not like that Russia didn't accuse USA from blowing it up - they did, just not very forcefully. It's strange, because they could have used it in e.g. Germany to split the society: "bad Americans want you to freeze, they blew up your gas pipelines".

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2. LarryMullins ◴[] No.34733243[source]
> That doesn't make sense. Russia can use this as a propaganda tool without having to act on it.

To acknowledge such an attack and not respond in kind would cause them to lose face, but responding in kind risks escalation. Ignoring the attack is their safest option.