[smcl]

I think if they were planning to do this they wouldn't have sent Joe Biden out and said "alright, drop a little hint that you're going to bomb Nordstream in the event of a Ukraine invasion". And if they were planning to do so and Biden blurted it out (because ... he's Joe Biden) I imagine any plans to bomb the pipeline would surely have been scrapped as he'd have just given the game away.

More realistic is the old man who has famously delivered gaffe after gaffe, who has repeatedly stumbled on his speeches and said dumb shit, said something a bit inelegant that everyone's now seizing on like a bunch of qanoners baking the latest q-drop on 8chan

[kcplate]

Even a gaffe doesn’t change the core strategic value, it only adds another variable to consider as part of the possible blowback of the operation.

Regardless, it’s apparent that even with a Biden gaffe in the mix, if the US was responsible it was done in a way that preserved enough mystery to minimize the blowback.

[smcl]

Right, this is what I'm saying. The situation is anything but clear and I don't think Biden's comments that day tell us anything concrete about this one way or another, and I think it's a mistake that some people think it does.

If the USA didn't commit this, then through their various covert actions over the last half-century they only have themselves to blame for the suspicion that it was down to them.

[kcplate]

I don’t think the gaffe proves it on its own, it’s the gaffe comment, the fact that the US policy towards Russia/Ukraine directly benefited from it’s destruction, there was bi-partisan opposition to the pipeline, and our history in such things that make me believe the US probably did it.

As President Obama famously supposedly said: “Never estimate Joe’s ability to fuck something up”