CBS Lara Logan Speaks Out, Says Islamists Hate Us Now More Than Ever

(Photo credit: AP)

Blaze readers are likely familiar with CBS correspondent, Lara Logan, the wartime journalist who endured a horrific ordeal in Egypt last summer when she was beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob of angry Egyptian men during their Arab Spring “celebrations.” Now, Logan has a message for the public: “they” (the Taliban and other Islamic operatives) are as strong as ever.

During a recent keynote address at the Better Government Association annual luncheon last Tuesday, Logan delivered what the Chicago Sun Times called “a provocative speech” to some 1,100 movers in government, politics, media, and the legal and corporate arenas. She explained that the Taliban, al Qaeda and its proxies haven’t gone away and are in fact re-energized and coming back in force. Logan also informed the crowd that a “lie” is being propagated by the American government.

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated…” Logan announced. The lie is that the U.S. military has tamed the Taliban.

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan began. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban.”

“It’s such nonsense!”

The Sun Times continues:

Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports. [...] She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war.

Logan went on to say that people have been duped into believing that the threat of radical Islam is merely a thing of the past, saying:

“You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

The CBS foreign correspondent, who broke with her traditional journalist’s role and actually shared her personal opinion with the group, also called for retribution for the slaying of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, two Navy SEALs and one additional U.S. civil servant in Libya.

According to the Sun Times, Logan hopes America will “exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil. That its ambassadors will not be murdered, and that the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”

While the Sun Times article appeared to question Logan for delving into opinion and “being” the story rather than “reporting” the story, it is difficult to imagine that someone who experienced atrocities in the Middle East first hand and was in fact physically assaulted could refrain from speaking from personal experience. After all, who better than one who lived it is qualified to judge?