Quote Originally Posted by mojo
What happened to that healthy skepticism, ong?
Healthy skepticism doesn't mean giving credit to absurd theories.

Nobody has demonstrated why Russia blowing up these pipes is not an absurd theory. Incompetence isn't cutting it. I've explained why it's ridiculous to think the Russian could have blown these pipes up by mistake. And given that there are four leaks, this is clearly not an accident.

Nobody has responded to the point about the attacks happening in NATO waters. Russia has never attacked NATO territory or infrastructure, because doing so is a massive geopolitical escalation. And they didn't need to attack on NATO territory, even if they wanted to put these pipes out of service. They could have chosen Russian waters. Or, if they wanted plausible deniability while not risking a massive escalation with NATO, they could have done this in Finnish or Swedish waters.

It's not beyond reason that some Russians decided to fuck the pipeline.
I don't think anybody believes this was caused by anyone other than a state actor, and by that we mean a navy. This is not something that anyone could do. So if by "some Russians" you mean ordinary, non-military citizens, then that's crazy. And if that's possible, then equally it could have been "some Moroccans".

...we can't really rule out anything.
You're a man of science. Of course we can rule out certain ideas. We can rule out anyone who doesn't have access to underwater explosives like depth charges. We can rule out anyone who doesn't have access to a ship.

What's more, if Russia did do this, we should be able to prove it, because they would have to sail there, and that isn't something you do in the Baltic Sea without being noticed. This is one reason people are insisting USA is responsible... they had ships in the region at the time. Even USA can't hide their navy from the rest of the world.

Even subs aren't going to go unnoticed in this sea, especially in NATO controlled waters.