6 ms·

I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it

I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends". I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however. There are specific details that journalists can dig into in the future to find validating hard facts. This may ultimately press a government to cop up to involvement over time, once enough evidence has mounted. That's not to say there aren't possible false leads and inaccuracies in his report. For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen the author makes the strongest possible case that there's not merit to Hersh's argument - but for me it comes across as Sophomoric. In terms of who destroyed the pipeline it is clear that the United States, United Kingdom and Ukraine had strong motives - and the US and UK capability. It's difficult to read commentary that dismisses these motivations out of hand as outrageous. Or at least, I'm coming in with priors that significantly diverge from these commentators.

pydry 4y ago
>I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. Nobody much wanted to talk on the record about My Lai or Abu Ghraib when it happened either.
- not2b 4y ago
  Seymour Hersh's sources for My Lai gave their names and went on the record. The soldiers who revealed it went on TV and testified before Congress. I'm pretty sure that he had additional anonymous sources, but to get it published he had to be able to back it up. Abu Ghraib was uncovered by Amnesty International and the international Red Cross and they had tons of photos.
- JackFr 4y ago
  Really? People absolutely went on the record about My Lai.
  - waffleiron 4y ago
    Potentially people are more careful after Snowden and Assange.
- djur 4y ago
  By the time Hersh first wrote about Abu Ghraib there had already been reporting on abuses by Amnesty International, and several days earlier some of the photos had been shown on 60 Minutes (as he mentions in the piece). The piece cites an Army report, credited to two named generals, and names seven suspects, six of whom were under active criminal prosecution. His report was published (and vetted!) by The New Yorker. The difference between that piece and this one in terms of sourcing and credibility is like night and day.
rexxxmi 4y ago
Until someone else can corroborate Hersh's story, or Hersh provides hard evidence, this is whole thing is a nothing burger.
- fakethenews2022 4y ago
  Until someone else takes credit for it, I'll take President Joe Biden's threat as evidence. Video link: https://youtube.com/shorts/FVbEoZXhCrM?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/FVbEoZXhCrM?feature=share
  - rexxxmi 4y ago
    Like I said, until someone can provide hard evidence, which that is not, I'll continue to hold reservations as any reasonable person would.
    - fakethenews2022 4y ago
      Yes. We can continue to hold reservations but that can be considered evidence. It is akin to someone getting killed and someone else prior saying they would kill that person. It doesn't mean they actually did it, but it is suspicion and motive that should lead to further investigations. That Germany and other countries aren't looking into it can also be considered circumstantial evidence.
      - quonn 4y ago
        It‘s not evidence because the pipeline wasn‘t that important anymore. They also looked into it. And finally any of them could have done it themselves as well. Nothing points to the US specifically. For the US such an operation would have a huge amount of risk and they have to gain nothing until the war is over and even after that very little or nothing. (Potentially they can sell their gas - but others as well.) So why do it? On the other hand, Germany had to gain a bit (shutting down the voices calling for it being opened) and Russia had to gain a lot (sowing distrust within NATO; forcing a change from NS1 to the remaining NS2; as a show of power and a threat; making a strategic change impossible to shut down future opposition within the power structure of Russia) or just to complete their shift to trade with China now instead. The NS2 project was already dead.)
aredox 4y ago
Russia also has that capability. And one of the pipelines remains operational.
DeLeeuw 4y ago
I agree with you, but I would take Ukraine off the list, although they had a strong motive. Ukraine's strategic cornerstone is international relations, without which they cannot win the war. Ukraine would never risk upsetting Germany, the EU's biggest economy, with such a drastic operation.
- callmetom 4y ago
  [dead]
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  Also, how would Ukraine pull off such a mission in a sea it has no access to?
  - GolfPopper 4y ago
    A boat, some underwater explosive charges, underwater ROVs, and a team to operate all the above seems likely to be well within Ukraine's capabilities. The first underwater ROV I found via googling is $10K: https://www.deeptrekker.com/shop/products/dtg3# https://www.deeptrekker.com/shop/products/dtg3# It seems like something within the technical capabilities and resources of any functioning non-microstate.
    - mopsi 4y ago
      And risk getting cut off from further military and economic support from allies? Highly unlikely.
- croes 4y ago
  How many people do you need to blast a pipeline? Don't have to be in line with the government of a country.
notafraudster 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with anonymous sourcing, but if your thing is based on a _single_ anonymous source, AND you've cultivated a reputation for being a credulous crank (see also the sourcing on the alternate universe Bin Laden writing Hersh did), AND you don't have any kind of editorial machine to back up your sourcing, AND the claim is incredibly inflammatory, then probably that's going to present a problem.
kspacewalk2 4y ago
None of what you said mentions of any specific details of either article, whatsoever. What specifically is an example of an insinuation you object to? Maybe pick one straw man and point it out? Otherwise, what's the informational content behind all this verbiage?
koheripbal 4y ago
> anonymous officials. ... this is the standard for journalism on these topics Unfortunately, it's also standard for planted false stories. It's notable that Hersh won the Nobel prize for producing photographic evidence of war crimes. None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true
- nkurz 4y ago
  > None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true While not "confirmed true", I think this piece shows that later evidence strongly supported Hersh's anonymous claims in this case: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/Who-carried-out-the-chemical-attack-in-Ghouta-on-August-21-2013 https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/Who-carried-out-the-chemi... It's an interesting style of analysis. You'll need to click on "Show more" below each section to see their actual evidence and reasoning.
  - bananapub 4y ago
    it's a useful heuristic of mine to massively distrust anyone who makes silly claims like assigning probabilities at 1 decimal point to things like this: > 1 Opposition: Opposition forces in Syria (Liwa al-Islam) carried out the chemical attack. 96.4% > 2 Syrian army: The Syrian army carried out the chemical attack. 3.6% though it helps when they also explain the process with nonsense like: > The few prior instances of chemical attacks against civilian targets contain factors that make them poor comparisons to the attack in Syria, leaving motivation as the primary factor. An analysis of the motivating factors behind such an attack results in the Syrian army being twice as likely to launch such an attack compared to an Opposition group, i.e. 67%-33%.
  - notafraudster 4y ago
    I really hate this style of analysis. It's transparent, yes: it's a prior being updated by evidence to produce a posterior, and you see where the rabbit goes in the hat. But this just puts a sciencism gloss on what are basically qualitative arguments. A short version of their argument is "You might think for any number of reasons that the Syrian government launched the missile, but other peoples calculations of the launch location were wrong and ours were right so it couldn't be the government." Their prior begins at 95-5 for the government doing it, then it becomes 69-31 for the government doing it when they show a video of an anti-government guerrilla wearing a chemical hazard suit, then it becomes 7-93 in favour of the opposition once they decide they know the launch site. The launch site evidence is supposed to mean the Syrian government's probability is divided by 3 and the opposition's probability is multiplied by 15. That's the whole argument, that's where the rabbit is in the hat. After that point, no other evidence can adjust anything. Most of the other evidence is just conjecture: they assign a 90% confidence to the evidence point "No western countries shared their evidence that the Syrian government did it" and they feel this fact is enough evidence to half their confidence in the Syrian government doing it. As proof for this, they literally say "The US says they have signals intercepts saying the Syrian government did it, but what if they actually have signals intercepts from the Syrian government asking if they did it or maybe they did admit to doing it but they were lying" This is not evidence. This really seems like crank people trying to apply a rational choice / scientific skeptic veneer to a process of qualitative reasoning. And frankly I flicked through another ten or fifteen pages on the blog and almost everything discussed was discussed in the exact manner LessWrong/Slate Star Codex commenters would, and many of the issues being discussed were the exact issues discussed on those sites. (I have no prior at all on the Syrian gas attacks, as I don't pretend to know anything about Syria or chemical weapons)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
0xDEF 4y ago
>For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen Like what? Give some examples. Hersh's article is just made up fiction. Hersh has a habit of making up "anonymous sources": >As soon as he has made an assertion he cites a 'source' to back it. In every case this is either an un-named former official or an unidentified secret document passed to Hersh in unknown circumstances. ... By my count Hersh has anonymous 'sources' inside 30 foreign governments and virtually every department of the U.S. government.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Doesn't have to mean that he makes them up though: when a group of professional "truth fabricators" (or rather "doubt fabricators", they don't really need their stories to be water-proof) has learned that he makes for an effective mouthpiece eager to believe he'll be swarmed with "sources".

pydry 4y ago

>I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. Nobody much wanted to talk on the record about My Lai or Abu Ghraib when it happened either.

not2b 4y ago
Seymour Hersh's sources for My Lai gave their names and went on the record. The soldiers who revealed it went on TV and testified before Congress. I'm pretty sure that he had additional anonymous sources, but to get it published he had to be able to back it up. Abu Ghraib was uncovered by Amnesty International and the international Red Cross and they had tons of photos.
JackFr 4y ago
Really? People absolutely went on the record about My Lai.
- waffleiron 4y ago
  Potentially people are more careful after Snowden and Assange.
djur 4y ago
By the time Hersh first wrote about Abu Ghraib there had already been reporting on abuses by Amnesty International, and several days earlier some of the photos had been shown on 60 Minutes (as he mentions in the piece). The piece cites an Army report, credited to two named generals, and names seven suspects, six of whom were under active criminal prosecution. His report was published (and vetted!) by The New Yorker. The difference between that piece and this one in terms of sourcing and credibility is like night and day.

rexxxmi 4y ago

Until someone else can corroborate Hersh's story, or Hersh provides hard evidence, this is whole thing is a nothing burger.

fakethenews2022 4y ago
Until someone else takes credit for it, I'll take President Joe Biden's threat as evidence. Video link: https://youtube.com/shorts/FVbEoZXhCrM?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/FVbEoZXhCrM?feature=share
- rexxxmi 4y ago
  Like I said, until someone can provide hard evidence, which that is not, I'll continue to hold reservations as any reasonable person would.
  - fakethenews2022 4y ago
    Yes. We can continue to hold reservations but that can be considered evidence. It is akin to someone getting killed and someone else prior saying they would kill that person. It doesn't mean they actually did it, but it is suspicion and motive that should lead to further investigations. That Germany and other countries aren't looking into it can also be considered circumstantial evidence.
    - quonn 4y ago
      It‘s not evidence because the pipeline wasn‘t that important anymore. They also looked into it. And finally any of them could have done it themselves as well. Nothing points to the US specifically. For the US such an operation would have a huge amount of risk and they have to gain nothing until the war is over and even after that very little or nothing. (Potentially they can sell their gas - but others as well.) So why do it? On the other hand, Germany had to gain a bit (shutting down the voices calling for it being opened) and Russia had to gain a lot (sowing distrust within NATO; forcing a change from NS1 to the remaining NS2; as a show of power and a threat; making a strategic change impossible to shut down future opposition within the power structure of Russia) or just to complete their shift to trade with China now instead. The NS2 project was already dead.)

aredox 4y ago

Russia also has that capability. And one of the pipelines remains operational.

DeLeeuw 4y ago

I agree with you, but I would take Ukraine off the list, although they had a strong motive. Ukraine's strategic cornerstone is international relations, without which they cannot win the war. Ukraine would never risk upsetting Germany, the EU's biggest economy, with such a drastic operation.

callmetom 4y ago
[dead]
kspacewalk2 4y ago
Also, how would Ukraine pull off such a mission in a sea it has no access to?
- GolfPopper 4y ago
  A boat, some underwater explosive charges, underwater ROVs, and a team to operate all the above seems likely to be well within Ukraine's capabilities. The first underwater ROV I found via googling is $10K: https://www.deeptrekker.com/shop/products/dtg3# https://www.deeptrekker.com/shop/products/dtg3# It seems like something within the technical capabilities and resources of any functioning non-microstate.
  - mopsi 4y ago
    And risk getting cut off from further military and economic support from allies? Highly unlikely.
croes 4y ago
How many people do you need to blast a pipeline? Don't have to be in line with the government of a country.

notafraudster 4y ago

There's nothing wrong with anonymous sourcing, but if your thing is based on a _single_ anonymous source, AND you've cultivated a reputation for being a credulous crank (see also the sourcing on the alternate universe Bin Laden writing Hersh did), AND you don't have any kind of editorial machine to back up your sourcing, AND the claim is incredibly inflammatory, then probably that's going to present a problem.

kspacewalk2 4y ago

None of what you said mentions of any specific details of either article, whatsoever. What specifically is an example of an insinuation you object to? Maybe pick one straw man and point it out? Otherwise, what's the informational content behind all this verbiage?

koheripbal 4y ago

> anonymous officials. ... this is the standard for journalism on these topics Unfortunately, it's also standard for planted false stories. It's notable that Hersh won the Nobel prize for producing photographic evidence of war crimes. None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true

nkurz 4y ago
> None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true While not "confirmed true", I think this piece shows that later evidence strongly supported Hersh's anonymous claims in this case: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/Who-carried-out-the-chemical-attack-in-Ghouta-on-August-21-2013 https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/Who-carried-out-the-chemi... It's an interesting style of analysis. You'll need to click on "Show more" below each section to see their actual evidence and reasoning.
- bananapub 4y ago
  it's a useful heuristic of mine to massively distrust anyone who makes silly claims like assigning probabilities at 1 decimal point to things like this: > 1 Opposition: Opposition forces in Syria (Liwa al-Islam) carried out the chemical attack. 96.4% > 2 Syrian army: The Syrian army carried out the chemical attack. 3.6% though it helps when they also explain the process with nonsense like: > The few prior instances of chemical attacks against civilian targets contain factors that make them poor comparisons to the attack in Syria, leaving motivation as the primary factor. An analysis of the motivating factors behind such an attack results in the Syrian army being twice as likely to launch such an attack compared to an Opposition group, i.e. 67%-33%.
- notafraudster 4y ago
  I really hate this style of analysis. It's transparent, yes: it's a prior being updated by evidence to produce a posterior, and you see where the rabbit goes in the hat. But this just puts a sciencism gloss on what are basically qualitative arguments. A short version of their argument is "You might think for any number of reasons that the Syrian government launched the missile, but other peoples calculations of the launch location were wrong and ours were right so it couldn't be the government." Their prior begins at 95-5 for the government doing it, then it becomes 69-31 for the government doing it when they show a video of an anti-government guerrilla wearing a chemical hazard suit, then it becomes 7-93 in favour of the opposition once they decide they know the launch site. The launch site evidence is supposed to mean the Syrian government's probability is divided by 3 and the opposition's probability is multiplied by 15. That's the whole argument, that's where the rabbit is in the hat. After that point, no other evidence can adjust anything. Most of the other evidence is just conjecture: they assign a 90% confidence to the evidence point "No western countries shared their evidence that the Syrian government did it" and they feel this fact is enough evidence to half their confidence in the Syrian government doing it. As proof for this, they literally say "The US says they have signals intercepts saying the Syrian government did it, but what if they actually have signals intercepts from the Syrian government asking if they did it or maybe they did admit to doing it but they were lying" This is not evidence. This really seems like crank people trying to apply a rational choice / scientific skeptic veneer to a process of qualitative reasoning. And frankly I flicked through another ten or fifteen pages on the blog and almost everything discussed was discussed in the exact manner LessWrong/Slate Star Codex commenters would, and many of the issues being discussed were the exact issues discussed on those sites. (I have no prior at all on the Syrian gas attacks, as I don't pretend to know anything about Syria or chemical weapons)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

0xDEF 4y ago

>For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen Like what? Give some examples. Hersh's article is just made up fiction. Hersh has a habit of making up "anonymous sources": >As soon as he has made an assertion he cites a 'source' to back it. In every case this is either an un-named former official or an unidentified secret document passed to Hersh in unknown circumstances. ... By my count Hersh has anonymous 'sources' inside 30 foreign governments and virtually every department of the U.S. government.

usrusr 4y ago
Doesn't have to mean that he makes them up though: when a group of professional "truth fabricators" (or rather "doubt fabricators", they don't really need their stories to be water-proof) has learned that he makes for an effective mouthpiece eager to believe he'll be swarmed with "sources".