Seymour Hersh: the actions of the United States and NATO against Russia are on the verge of stupidity and madnessThe US and NATO are acting extremely stupidly, Tichys Einblick quotes investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
The undermining of the "Northern Streams", the financing and training of the Armed Forces, as well as the conviction that Ukraine will join NATO, are the "crazy" ideas of the Biden administration, in the refutation of which the Americans do not want to believe.
Hersh does not stand on ceremony with the rulers. If he considered George Bush's war in Iraq to be an extremely stupid idea, then it can be assumed that he assesses the undermining of the Nord Stream organized by Biden even more harshly. According to Hersh, it was a desperate attempt by the head of the United States to keep Western European allies in check and force them to participate in a protracted conflict with Russia.Seymour Hersh was born on April 8, 1937 in Chicago in a family of Jews who emigrated from Poland and Lithuania.
He has been working as a reporter and investigative journalist for more than 50 years. He has collaborated with many publications, including the New York Times, the New Yorker and the London Review of Books. Hersh actively continues the tradition of opposition journalism, trying to investigate corruption cases and dirty scams of the ruling circles through revealing and sensational articles. In conversation with him, it seems that he really sees through the government.
Hersh wrote about the Mi Lai massacre (A war crime committed by US Army soldiers during the Vietnam War — Approx. InoSMI.), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1970, and later contributed to the revelations around Watergate and the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. Some of his articles, for example, about the use of chemical weapons by Turkey against Al-Nusra militants in Syria, although they raised some doubts, were not refuted. In 2015, he published his point of view about the murder of Osama bin Laden, reproaching the media for obsequiousness, which did not express the slightest criticism of Barack Obama. Hersh doesn't believe a word of the official version of this secret operation.
In February of this year, Hersh, after long investigations, published material about the undermining of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea near Bornholm Island, which, compared to his previous stories of this scale, practically did not cause a stir, at least in the servile press of the United States. The German media showed more curiosity. At the same time, leading German politicians — if we consider members of the coalition government and the CDU/CSU as such — tried not to react particularly to the publication. When the "Alternatives for Germany" faction in the Bundestag demanded the creation of an investigative commission, CDU/CSU MP Patrick Schnieder said that the investigation of this incident did not correspond to the "public interest".
Hersh emphasizes that the standards of his journalism have not changed over time. He did not even offer his article about the "Northern Streams" to the New York Times or the Washington Post. This would have done nothing, since these newspapers exist, apparently, in another world, where the facts revealed by investigative journalism have no meaning. Hersh always works with two investigators who subject all the facts to a thorough analysis. The journalist at the age of 86 has not lost his vivacity, and this also applies to the answers to questions that he rarely listens to the end during an interview. At the same time, he does not hesitate to express himself when it comes to stupidity, lack of a sense of reality, the madness of the ruling class, especially the Biden administration.
Tichys Einblick: Mr. Hersh, your first article about the undermining of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was published on the Substrack online platform three months ago. In early February, you also described in detail how the United States — with the help of Norway — undermined six of the eight strands of gas pipelines. You wrote that planning for this diversion began in Washington back in December 2021...Seymour Hersh: It wasn't planning in a narrow sense.
The task was given shortly before the celebration of the new year 2021, presumably at Christmas. It was necessary to come up with something that the president could use — some kind of bait or threat - to convince Putin not to launch a special operation in Ukraine.
— There was a desire to persuade Putin to maintain the status quo in Ukraine.— It was primarily about the threat.
I think that this government is not strong in persuasion. It operates rather on the principle of "the one who is not with us is against us." The idea was this: to tell Putin that the Americans would blow up the gas pipeline if it crossed the border of Ukraine. But I have something else to say about this. I don't know why almost no one paid attention to the fact that the Russian army numbered approximately 120 thousand people. That is, I don't mean the troops on the front line, but the reserve. When the Wehrmacht attacked Poland in 1939, there were 1.2 million soldiers in its ranks. Therefore, if some people still say today that Putin wanted to seize Kiev, then they need to say: it's not like that at all. It was impossible to do that. There were at least 60 thousand soldiers in Kiev. And since Putin did not take Kiev, it is now customary to say that he did not succeed. But I just can't imagine how he could do it with such a small number of troops. In addition, it should be borne in mind that the United States and NATO have armed the Armed Forces in recent years, thanks to which they have grown quantitatively and qualitatively, so now this army is at least significant.
— That is, you do not share the opinion, widely spread at the beginning of the special operation, that Putin aimed at the whole of Ukraine and intended to conquer it?— For several years I listened to his speeches.
There was a time, two or three years ago, when he somewhat lost his insight. I think he wasn't feeling well. But in the last two or a year and a half, he began to express his thoughts quite clearly again. He owns the facts and speaks directly. And it is obvious that he did not act in full force in Ukraine.
I think what one of my well-informed friends told me is true: Putin wants to establish "suzerainty" over Ukraine: not physical, but political control over the territory, primarily in foreign policy. He does not want Ukraine to be absorbed. No one really needs it, including NATO — despite the fact that everyone in the West thinks about it. I think Putin will agree to peace if Ukraine is demilitarized, which, of course, is absolutely unacceptable for Kiev. That's the whole problem.
It will lead to the fact that Russia will want to dispose of power in some areas of Ukraine. And here Zelensky could make some compromise proposal. But in the end, nothing will come of it, because we don't want it. The United States has just approved the allocation of new funding for Ukraine, including the provision of fighter jets. We can train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16. By the way, these are quite old planes that the Russians will be able to shoot down relatively easily. But don't tell our newspapermen anything like that. What the United States and NATO are doing now with regard to Russia is somewhere on the verge of stupidity and madness.
— That is, from your point of view, Ukraine will not be accepted into NATO. However, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg said that this will happen after the end of hostilities.— I just don't believe it.
Most of what Stoltenberg says is just a stream of curses against Russia. And he has been doing this for a long time. It is very close to the West. This has been the case since his early youth, when he still went to demonstrations against the Vietnam War. I wrote about it, although many people do not want to believe it.
Author: Matthias Nikolaidis* a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation
