Looking closely at Sy Hersh's nuttery on Osama bin Laden.

And, nuttery it is, not only as a conspiracy theory, but Hersh's apparent first ax-grinding against the Navy Seals, as I noted when first discussing his Nord Stream nuttery, or even more, the second piece about his ax-grinding. This is a prequel to another piece about Sy coming up. The original wound up being too long, and so is split.

In reality, the Seals that Sy seems to hate are likely saboteurs without all the cloak-and-dagger overhead that Hersh painted. I mean, look at how smoothly, overall, the bin Laden raid went. So smoothly that Sy had to paint a line of BS on that one, too. And that, in turn, ties back to his ax-grinding.

Let's look at that more.

To be blunt, it's conspiracy-theory mongering. Hersh claims:

The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open.

That this mission, as portrayed, didn't actually happen. At the same time, he claims it did happen as portrayed, only that bin Laden was an Inter-Services Intelligence prisoner.

Hersh never explains how bin Laden was arrested, in this case. Nor why the ISI arrested him, yet put him in Abbotabad. He does offer a "why" on his arrest, but is it plausible? The Taliban existed before bin Laden and al Qaeda relocated to Afghanistan. If push came to shove, they might "walk" on him. From there, like the typical conspiracy, Hersh cuts himself while trying to shave with something other than Ockham's Razor.

The biggest ridiculousness is that this much manpower would have been wasted on a mission if it were just kill-and-destroy. I mean, this IS Dear Leader, the man who had already drone-killed an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Once should also note that this piece, just like Sy's Nord Stream piece, relies not on anonymous sourceS but source, singular. Per the link at top, yeah, Sy's track record isn't good in a lot of things. And, in things like the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, he's been willing enough, even gullible enough, to stick himself on a limb that can easily be sawn off.

And, specific to this story, with lone-source reliance, we also seem to have something else similar to Nord Stream. "Dirty" intelligence, with enough chaff in it to leave Hersh open for undermining once he publishes.