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The more alarming question the article raises is : /If/ the US did blow the pipeline, could anyone in traditional civilian or military leadership corroborate they gave their blessing (or even stern objection) to this operation before or during or after those charges were placed?
The article highlights that this project was run out of a A. small inner circle of whitehouse insiders, B. an intelligence agency, C. a small detached unit of navy personnel, D. some collaboration with NATO commanders in the Baltics. Not a single member of congress (or a single Republican?) is ever told about this for nine months.
Basically, we may have initiated an act of war against a nuclear power, and 99.9% of our leadership is completely ignorant if we even did it! Obviously, the military chain of command under proper civilian leadership is broken if the whitehouse insiders are allowed to run black ops that could trigger a nuclear war with no accountability or oversight.
Hersch has given an investigator with subpoena powers everything they need to corroborate or debunk his claims: the location of the navy base where the divers would have been stationed, and the dates the charges were planted. From there, narrowing the small cadre of elite divers, to the even smaller cohort actively diving on the days should narrow the list down to a manageable set of interviews and figure out if they placed the charges. Then the other question to ask, ideally again through subpoena of all records: is it true that all of congress can claim full ignorance of this operation?
The more alarming question for USA citizens, sure. But the citizens in Germany would be alarmed in a different way: "USA are not our allies".
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Yes, but it is also, ACTUALLY broken if we consider the current POTUS to be nothing more than a walking and talking vegetable hopped up on god knows what meds. It feels like his lucidity and "coherence of taught" is drifting one way or the other depending on what meds and how much they've been given to him just before the press conference.
Do you genuinely believe Joe Biden is in a near vegetative state powered only by drugs, and lacking normal cognitive abilities?
Do you consider dementia a near vegetative state?
These are medical definitions on which our personal opinions have no bearing. Vegetative state means a specific thing - if someone's view is "Biden is too old and dopey to be trusted to be president" then say that.
It's a manner of speaking, just like saying he isn't sharpest pencil in the box. Doesn't mean he is literally a pencil.
So it would be accurate to say he very likely has dementia?
Of course "He isn't the sharpest pencil" doesn't mean he's literally a pencil, it's a negation - it's saying he is not.
Yes, that's exactly what the idiom means: the person is literally not a pencil.
If this is not bad faith argumentation, I don't know what is.
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