Lara Logan, a CBS investigative reporter, has covered the war in Afghanistan from the very beginning.
If anyone knows what's going on over there she does.
And Lara has a message for the American people, based on her years of experience in the Middle East and with the Taliban.
In her recent speech at the Better Government Association's annual luncheon, Lara warns that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are coming back. They hate us now more than ever.
Here are a few excerpts from Lara's speech:
“I have been working on a story that when I first broached the idea, everybody looked at me skeptically, even the trusted people around me who have been through a lot with me, and that was a story about al Qaeda in Afghanistan today. It’s funny because nobody thought that was an issue to be paying attention to, and nobody thought there was any real traction to that, and it pissed me off. ’Cause I knew I wasn’t wrong. I had covered that war from the beginning and I had watched what was happening on the battlefield, and I had never missed a year of the Afghan war. … I knew that we were being lied to, and I knew that the American people were being misled. … I don’t think that politics should dictate national security policy.”
“This is terrorism. It’s a completely and utterly different fight from anything we have faced in our history, and that’s why we chose to do this story.”
“Our way of life is under attack. If you think that’s … war-mongering, you’re not listening to what the people fighting you say about this fight..
“In your arrogance you think you write the script but you don’t. There’s two sides, and we don’t dictate the terms.”
“Not only do we not dictate the terms, but we have less power to dictate anything on the world stage. We now face an enemy about whom former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker said: ’We’ve killed all the slow and stupid ones, and the ones that are left are more committed, and they didn’t become any kinder or gentler in the last 11 years. We think we’ve won the campaign when they haven’t even begun to fight.’ ”
“I can’t stand that there is a major lie being propagated about the real situation. I don’t care who’s in power.”
“If you fail to identify the ideological component to this fight, if you fail to identify what your enemy is really fighting for, if you lie about who they really are, I don’t see how you can possibly have the right strategy.”
“When I look at what’s happening in Libya, there’s a big... dance about whether this was a terrorist attack or a protest. And you just want to scream, “...Are you kidding me?” The last time we were attacked like this was the USS Cole, which was a prelude to the 1998 embassy bombings, which was a prelude to 9/11. And you’re sending in FBI to investigate. I hope to God that you’re sending in your best clandestine warriors who are going to 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 the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”
