CBS Reporter Lara Logan: Middle East spin “a major lie being propagated”

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This was no ordinary rubber chicken affair. That was my reaction to the extraordinary keynoter at Tuesday’s Better Government Association annual luncheon.

Lara Logan, a correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” delivered a provocative speech to about 1,100 influentials from government, politics, media, and the legal and corporate arenas. Such downtown gatherings are a regular on Chicago’s networking circuit. (I am a member of the BGA’s Civic Leadership Committee, and the Chicago Sun-Times was a sponsor).

Her ominous and frightening message was gleaned from years of covering our wars in the Middle East. She arrived in Chicago on the heels of her Sept. 30 report, “The Longest War.” It examined the Afghanistan conflict and exposed the perils that still confront America, 11 years after 9/11.

Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .” Logan declared in her native South African accent.

The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”

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. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “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.”

Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

Continue reading in Chicago’s Sun-Times

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“The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.”

I don’t have a clue what Laura Logan is talking about. I don’t recall anyone in the Obama administration having suggested that the Taliban has been “tamed.” Were that the case, we wouldn’t still be involved in a war there.

I think she’s a symptom of an attitude that may draw us deeper and deeper into military involvements having no clear path to any final resolution. Romney doesn’t seem to have learned anything from our past miscalculations. Today, he stated that we should be providing armaments to Syrian rebels. Specifically, heavy weapons. (Hey, maybe we can get ourselves into a proxy war with Russia. I can only imagine the howls we would be hearing from the right if Obama had openly suggested we should be sending guns and heavy weaponry to the Syrian rebels. Or if it were suddenly revealed that we have been.)

My own thought is that it’s time for the Muslim world to tend to some of it’s own business. Turkey and Saudi Arabia should be able to supply plenty of weapons to the enemies of Bashar al-Assad. I will quietly applaud their effort.

This is the fool you call a pres:

At a celebrity fundraiser last night in Los Angeles, President Obama acknowledged his mistakes on the campaign trail and asked donors for their continued support.

The event began with a concert at the Nokia Theater for about 6,000 donors, headlined by Jon Bon Jovi, Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry and Jennifer Hudson.

“Everybody here are just incredible professionals. They’re such great friends, and they just perform flawlessly night after night,” Obama said, thanking the musicians for their performance.

“I can’t always say the same,” he added to laughter and applause from the crowd.

Obama reminded the crowd that his 2008 election also had “bumps in the road.”

“Back in 2008 — everybody always remembers the victory, but they don’t always remember the bumps in the road,” he said. “Things always look good in retrospect. But in the middle of it, we were — we made all kinds of mistakes. We goofed up. I goofed up. But the American people carried us forward.”

Actor George Clooney also attended the event, delivering a speech on behalf of the President and a video was aired featuring Eva Longoria, Jennifer Lopez, Julianne Moore, Ashley Judd and Beyonce.

Later in the evening, Obama attended a fundraising dinner with Clooney at WP24 by Wolfgang Puck for 150 guests at a cost of $25,000 per person.

“I am a fairly competitive guy,” Obama said during the event. “Clooney has played basketball with me. And I don’t like to lose — especially not to actors.”

“We were on the same team,” Clooney reminded Obama.

“We were on the same team,” Obama replied. “I put him on the team — and we did win.”

Interesting:

Obama reminded the crowd that his 2008 election also had “bumps in the road.”

Obama used the same phrase to refer to the dead ambassador, the dead embassy employee, and the two former seals who fought to the death to prevent a catastrophe. He considers them bumps in the road, but for a narcissist absorbed in his own arrogance, no one else really matters. Oh sure, he says certain groups are important, at least until their votes are assured, and the it is all about Obama and these bumps in the road that plague his presidency.

@MataHarley, #3:

You should have stopped right after “I don’t have a clue…”. If you don’t “recall” the O’admin touting talking and negotiating with the “moderates” of the Taliban as the solution for Afghanistan, perhaps you need to invest in some Ginkoba…

I don’t much care what Ms. Logan’s supposed political leanings are. I don’t interpret talking with less extreme Afghan tribal leaders having Taliban associations as promulgating the position that “America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.” Neither should anyone else who understands the need for a pragmatic approach to the situation.

After hearing Romney today expounding on the need to provide heavy armament to Syrian rebels who don’t have an identifiable political identity, I shudder to think what he might do in Afghanistan. I don’t know how those who blasted Obama for U.S. intervention in Libya can be behind Romney’s position.

Lara Logan may have been ”mugged by reality,” which is the definition of how a liberal often becomes conservative.
She was raped and punched and ”thought she was going to die,” while she tried to cover the ”Arab Spring” in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.
She barely got away.
http://watching-tv.ew.com/2011/05/01/lara-logan-60-minutes-rape-assault/
She felt comfortable in the Square because she had years of covering the Middle East.
She was wrong.
And she learned that WE are wrong when we parrot Obama’s ”narrative” about the Taliban and al Qaeda being ”on the ropes.’
She points out, eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished. They’re coming back.
Yup. Obama’s ”narrative” is one big lie.
There is no ”Arab Spring.”
The worst of the Sharia Law pushers have taken over in the Middle East and North Africa.
Terrorists are being recruited from those places as well as from Europe and the USA.
EVEN IF Obama had a false flag operation going on in Libya whereby our CIA was out trying to round up weapons Obama had given to the Libyan ”rebels,” makes no difference.
The outcome was our Ambassador was brutally murdered with three envoys.

Here he is telling these people how perfect they are that have no clue what everyday Americans are going through they make millions. But the men and woman that give their lives for us everyday never get that praise from them…The enemy hates us and no matter how much he says he is sorry to them they are just bidding their time and they will come…..

Mata, (and mr clueless, you know who you are)

Hasn’t Obama been saying repeatedly on the campaign trail “we killed osama and have the taliban on the run:?

I know I have heard it at least a dozen times. When you have someone on the run, doesn’t that mean that you are pursuing a defeated enemy or does Greg the brilliant call that just a wrongly worded statement. After all, BO always says Words matter; kind of like spiking the ball about killing Osama and then letting the Muslims kill Americans who become bumps in the road to his re-election.

Oct 1 2012 this hit the You Tube and LiveLink waves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbdMFXjQmiI
20 seconds long…..
‘Obama: “Al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat and Osama Bin Laden is dead.”
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=86b_1349104339&comments=1
‘Obama: “Al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat and Osama Bin Laden is dead.”
This… on the same day US military deaths in Afghanistan reach 2,000.

At the DNC:

Obama, “We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan…….Al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat and Osama Bin Laden is dead…”

Notice the use of the exact same phrase in two different speeches?
Obama regurgitates old lines from other speeches all the time.

Here’s the White House’s own position paper from which Obama gets some of his lines….note the date?
MAY 2011……

“delivered justice to Osama bin Laden and put al Qaeda on the path to defeat

Whatever a ”path to defeat,” is.

“Al Qaeda leadership ranks have been decimated, with more key leaders removed in rapid succession than at any time since 9/11, including Osama bin Laden, and nearly all of al Qaeda’s top ten leaders in Pakistan.
Virtually every major al Qaeda affiliate has lost its key leader or operational commander; this includes Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
For the first time since 9/11, we are approaching the operational and strategic defeat of al Qaeda.”

Uh huh.

“Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan: denying al Qaeda a safe-haven, reversing the Taliban’s momentum, and strengthening the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take the lead for Afghanistan’s future.”

As in ”Green On Blue Attacks” on the rise?

@MataHarley: CBS could get more “lefty” by becoming more like FreeSpeech and Link TV—if you happen to know what their programing is like.

@MataHarley: I don’t know why you don’t like Romney. He’s got all the qualifications necessary for president—according to Grover Norquist—a working set of finger digits to sign anything that the fundamentalist Republicans like Christian-taliban leader Senator Braun want: For the Bible (including, presumably, stoning of adulteresses) to become law of the land.

@Greg: Love it when ragheads are killing each other. Smells like napalm in the morning. Am sure Romney just wants both sides equal when it comes to weapons at hand. Don’t want this to end too soon. The more fertilizer made the better. Less we have to be worried about and Israel will make sure it stays contained.

@MataHarley: O’admin is slow on the learning curve. So by this month, they’ve abandoned hopes for the Taliban cultural reachout… a hope that anyone with the slightest knowledge of the jihadi mentality could have told “da one” was a hopeless endeavor.

Obama’s learning curve is slower than you imagined, Mata.
One week after your citation about the abandoning of talks between Obama and the Taliban, they might be back on!
Oct. 8th: [T]he US was ready to resume talks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/08/us-taliban-talks-guantanamo
US-Taliban talks collapsed over Guantánamo deal, says official
Peace negotiations foundered after failure to agree fate of detainees, but US now ready to resume talks

@Liberal1 (Objectivity):

“He’s got all the qualifications necessary for president—according to Grover Norquist—a working set of finger digits to sign anything that the fundamentalist Republicans like Christian-taliban leader Senator Braun want: For the Bible (including, presumably, stoning of adulteresses) to become law of the land.”

What an utterly ridiculous screed…

How did you manage to type the word “Objectivity” into your handle without opening some black-hole or space-time distortions in the universe??

Anyway — thanks for the comment, dummy. That was the funniest bit of liberal idiocy I’ve read today! 😆

Congrats, moron.

@Greg:

“I don’t know how those who blasted Obama for U.S. intervention in Libya can be behind Romney’s position.”

Are you referring to 0bama’s illegal war in Libya without congressional approval??? Keyworkd: illegal.

Read the U.S. Constitution once in a while, Greg, and maybe you won’t look so foolish writing such utter stupidity.

Sheesh, you liberals are dumb.

This Administration reminds me of all the Democrats in Congress during the Vietnam War that did a victory dance when they forced us to pull out of the country and kept stating that it would stabalize the area by removing the US. 6 months later the NVA overran the South and Pol Pot was butchering his own people in the coming years.