Digby: Lara Logan in Her Own Words on Her World View [View all]

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Sunday, November 10, 2013

Lara Logan in her own words

10/2/2012

by digby

Here are her comments on Benghazi from that speech to the Better Government Association's annual luncheon October 12, 2012, one month after the Benghazi attack:

When I look at what's happening in Libya, there's a big song and dance about whether this was a terrorist attack or a protest. And you just want to scream, for God's sake, are you kidding me? The last time we were attacked like this was the USS Cole which was a prelude to 9/11. And you're sending in the FBI to investigate? I hope to God that you are sending in your best clandestine warriors to exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil, its ambassadors will not be murdered and the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.

Here's the whole speech which is mostly about journalism and her recent report from Afghanistan in which she asserted that al Qaeda and the Taliban were stronger than ever, the US was "surrendering" and that "our way of life is under attack" among many other very interesting observations. You really must watch the whole thing to get a sense of where she's coming from.

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Needless to say, the fact that she fell for such a clearly ridiculous hoax was due to her biases. She shows in that speech that she had already made up her mind about what happened. And 60 Minutes should have been professionally skeptical of her story because of that. Logan's agenda blinded her to the fact that she was being played.

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I also think there's something very odd about this speech. Logan is talking to the "Better Government Association" not CPAC. And her affect suggests that she thinks her views are commonly held conventional wisdom, which might have been true in 2003, but seems weirdly out of time ten years on.

It's an odd speech and it was noted at the time as an odd speech:

(T)he foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes star skewered American policy in Afghanistan and Libya, called for a ramped-up military campaign against terrorists, and criticized the Obama administration and others for both underestimating the Taliban’s strength in Afghanistan and for tolerating Pakistan’s obvious coddling of terrorists killing American soldiers.

The Taliban and al Qaeda, she made clear, “want to destroy the West and us,” and we must fight fire with fire, She appeared to leave the assembled alternatively riveted and just a bit troubled by a critique with interventionist implications clearly drawn from her reporting.

As one nonprofit executive, a former magazine editor, put it the next day when asked to describe her speech: “Shoot ’em, bomb ’em, fuck ’em. They will kill your children.”

There is a rich history of foreign correspondents being outspoken and passionate in offering political commentary, especially those who have been caught in harm’s way. Logan herself was a victim of brutality; in 2011 the South Africa native was beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while she covered the demonstrations prompted by President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. Such a harrowing experience would surely impact even the most politically cautious of journalists. Still, the sharp advocacy from such a prominent network reporter caught some in the Chicago crowd by surprise.

I have no idea if any of this was prompted by her horrible attack. But I do recall that even before that awful event, she was very critical of Michael Hastings' "betrayal" of General McChrystal. She has revered the military for a long time and even her critical reporting on Iraq earlier in the decade was criticism for failing to unleash the military in order to "win." I think she has always held these beliefs.

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