CBS Reporter Lara Logan

[onmyknees]

You leprous left wingers and Islamist sympathizers need to take 20 minutes out of your busy day ... jerking off to tranny porn, playing video games and smoking weed while watching Bill Maher's sophomoric monologues and listen to Lara Logan demolish O'bama's Mid East policy.....A policy based on a naive world view by an undeserving Nobel Prize winner who thought that by apologizing to Islamists for America's past perceived sins against them, they might feel inclined not to kill us. In fact, while you're listening to Ms. Logan, know that just yesterday at a campaign stop in Ohio, the architect of this now house of cards policy again felt inclined to tell us " Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is on the run" Really ??

Ms Logan clears up any misconceptions Barry the Deceiver has left for us.

[broncofan]

I didn't listen to the video nor do I plan to. I don't mean that as an insult to you but I find hilarious the apostrophe you've inserted in Obama's name (O'bama).

So now he's Irish and not Kenyan? Perhaps he was really born in Dublin and should have to prove otherwise?

Edit: just in case OMK erases it, you'll have to take my word, it was there both in the sub-heading and long monologue saying something about left-wingers having leprosy or something equally thoughtful and non-partisan.

[trish]

Oh now we're leprous. O'Myknees is again spreading the hate I see.
I'm voting for Obama 'cause he finally took out Bin Laden, unlike that whimp Bush who shrugged his shoulders and gave up. Also, 'cause Romney's such an ephemeral etch-a-sketchy bitch you can't count on anything he says.

[Ben]

Lara Logan is hot. No, seriously. She's hot. Very hot. Can't pay attention to the words coming out of her mouth because I'm cumming. I mean, she's that hot.
The question Lara Logan should pose: was the invasion of Afghanistan illegal? Should the U.S. care about the rule of law?
What about, say, the sanctions on Iran? Should we consider that terror? Is it "terror" to impose a trade blockade on another country?

[buttslinger]

I think, as a Nation, we should be open to changing our Middle East Policy based on Ms. Logan's remarks, however I'd like to see where Padma Lakshmi weighs in on the subject before we make a rash decision we may regret later.

[Prospero]

Leprous eh.. islamist sympathizers... the cavities of old OMK's brain are obviously caving in. He is twitching with senility. The poor old man. Move his bathchair into the sun lounge nurse and oh look he is drooling again.

[Stavros]

You leprous left wingers and Islamist sympathizers need to take 20 minutes out of your busy day ... jerking off to tranny porn, playing video games and smoking weed while watching Bill Maher's sophomoric monologues and listen to Lara Logan demolish O'bama's Mid East policy.....A policy based on a naive world view by an undeserving Nobel Prize winner who thought that by apologizing to Islamists for America's past perceived sins against them, they might feel inclined not to kill us. In fact, while you're listening to Ms. Logan, know that just yesterday at a campaign stop in Ohio, the architect of this now house of cards policy again felt inclined to tell us " Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is on the run" Really ??

Ms Logan clears up any misconceptions Barry the Deceiver has left for us.

I had never heard of Lara Logan before seeing this, but I think her judgements are questionable.

She argues that the US govt/CIA/Military intelligence claim that there are only about 50 members of al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan is a lie, that the claim that the Taliban have changed is a lie, and argues that the attack in Bengazi that killed Ambassador Stevens was an al-Qaeda attack (I also argued this in a post a few weeks ago, and I am not genius); that the threat to the US is real, it hasn't gone away.

On one level I cannot disagree, because nobody has said that al-Qaeda has been beaten - Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted by a drone attack in the Yemen because the CIA had firm evidence that an attempt to revive/extend the al-Qaeda franchise had taken advantage of the lawlessness there and Awlaki (an American) was implicated in the attempt by the underpants bomber, Umar Abdulmuttalab to blow up a plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009.
It has been pointed out enough times that the original core of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan not only split after 9/11 because some members thought it was the wrong thing to do, but that it was then pummelled by the air raids -what they don't remind people is how hostile the Afghans were to al-Qaeda and the Arabs whose presence they resented. The current concern is with al-Qaeda or an al-Qaeda type movement in Mali, claiming to be al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, focused mainly on overthrowing the govt in Algeria. For that matter, there is an al-Qaeda in the Maldives, and probably an al-Qaeda in California.

But the al-Qaeda type movement in Somalia, the Shebab, has spiralled into chaos and may disappear altogether, because ordinary people don't want that kind of extremism. And Somalia even just a year or so ago was considered a lost cause. Things change -where's a CBS journalist when you need one, and particularly one born in Africa called Logan?

Logan blasts Pakistan -is this news?
It has been known for years that Pakistan is playing a double game, and that this has as much to do with corruption in the armed forces and the intelligence services, as it does with Pakistan's ambitions in Afghanistan, which is, primarily, to prevent India from being more influential there. This is not news, this is not shocking. And who was it who promoted an Islamic extremist in Pakistan called Zia ul-Haq? Ronald Reagan, that's who. Every US govt since has been expected to pour millions of $$ into the country while knowing of its duplicity and unreliability. There are ways out of this, but that's for another thread.

Her claims about the Taliban, that they haven't gone away and are ready to take people back 3,000 years -as in, before the Islamic period?- are odd, because if she does know Afghanistan, she will know that there are indeed the hard core who have never changed, but that there are Taliban who have. She would also know -or ought to know- that there are people who have turned to the Taliban in just the last few years because they are fed up with the corruption in central govt and its inability to build something as basic as a road.

Finally, she makes an astonishing remark about Vietnam and the Vietcong: To think there is any similarity between this and Viet Nam is ridiculous. The Viet Cong didn't care what you did when you went back to America. The Viet Cong weren't fighting for an Islamic caliphate. The Viet Cong didn't have a global struggle.
What is astonishing about this, is that in the 1960s this is precisely what the US, and Henry Kissinger thought: they saw the communist movement in Vietnam as part of a global movement that was orchestrated from Moscow. Nixon and Kissinger saw the conflict in Vietnam as a Cold War confrontation with the USSR and showed little interest in the situation in Vietnam itself; they expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos precisely because they believed that these states were vulnerable to communism and that it had to be met head on there with bombs; one of the reasons that the US patchd up its relations with China was to widen the split between China and the USSR and isolate the latter.

What she could also have pointed out, since the Communists are still in power in Vietnam, is how she views that country now, home to hundreds if not thousands of US companies all making money. Rather like in China, where the Communist Party is also still in power, and 'chooses'/appoints a new leadership next month. If money is the key, the US should be more concerned at getting its mineral firms into Afghanistan because in the long term that is where the money lies, and money is more important to most people than politics.

So many holes, so much cheese. And this is the Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent of CBS?

Ps, I don't have leprosy, I am not a left-winger, and I have not sympathised with Islamic terrorists.

[Prospero]

So there is a serious global conflict underway. I think we know this. I have - in many posts here - tried to explain to the man who never listens or debates that there is a conflict going on across the Muslim world between the mass or ordinary moderate people (who happen to be Muslims) and the radicals - the islamists of extreme views such as the Taliban, al-Queda and the other million named hydra of radicalism. But these people are NOT the majority. They are a poisonous minority.

Obama is right in pursuing the Taliban and their associates in Pakistan (via drone attacks), in the Yemen and elsewhere. And he is also right to build bridges to those parts of the Muslim world which sees, in US and Western foreign policy for many decades, an innate hostility or disregard for the Muslim world. It is a way to help them in their own fight against the radicals.

We have only to see the human cost that such bravery amounts to in the murder bid against a young girl in Pakistan this week for arguing and publicly campaigning for the rights of girls to an education. That child, fighting for her life, was a Muslim. Not a radical. Not al-queda.

OMK (who matters not a jot) but whose voice is emblematic of ill-informed opinion would have us believe that ALL Muslims are like the Jihadists who this fine reporter talks about. They are NOT. And defending ordinary men, women and children who happen to be Muslims does not make me - or Trish - or any of those who take the time to find out about these things properly rather than drinking at the fountains of knowledge that are the self enclosed right-wing sources - Islamists or islamist apologists.

This reporter - a damn fine reporter - is right to report that the war is not being won.

But what she doesn't explain here are the deeper sources of all of this. And the wider context.

And finally who was it that took their eyes of the ball in Afghanistan. Yes, the neo-cons under their excellent leader George Bush who instead of continuing to focus on the Taliban in Afghanistan instead diverted America's might to a totally spurious and illegal war against a man (evil though he was) who was a bulwark against the radicals. That little dust-up costs thousands of innocent lives. For what... to destabilise the whole region. So now then - let a new GOP Presidency lead the West into an even bigger catastrophe by attacking iran? God forbid.

[Prospero]

And a view published in the leading English language daily paper in the United Arab Emirates.....The National

Republican vision for Middle East at odds with reality
Danny Sebright

Oct 11, 2012

Sitting in my hotel room in Abu Dhabi on Monday, I listened intently to Mitt Romney's speech on how he would shape US policy in the Middle East if elected president. I was expecting to hear some new direction, perhaps even a new comprehensive approach.

Instead, I heard Mr Romney pushing the same policies he's championed from the beginning of his campaign - ideas that would take the US and the Middle East back in time, not forward.

Mr Romney basically told his audience at the Virginia Military Institute that the US needs to take control and dictate the outcome of the events in the region. What that tells me is that the Republican nominee and his team of advisers have failed to understand the tectonic changes taking place in the Middle East. They are about what the people who live in the Middle East want, not what Washington expects.

People in the region seek real improvements in their lives and the lives of their children - a view I heard over and over during the first day of the Abu Dhabi Media Summit on Tuesday. The US has become such a target of anger and unrest largely because of how Americans are perceived after 10 years of waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and after conducting drone strikes in Pakistan.

To be clear, President Barack Obama's policies in the region over the last three-and-a-half years have not been perfect, nor have they significantly advanced certain US interests with regards to some key challenges and problems. However, Mr Obama's commitment to supporting those who champion policy interests and objectives shared by the US have been central to America's foreign policy since he took office.

President Obama has rightly tried to extricate the US from conflict in the region and bring American troops home.

And he understands that the dynamics at play today in the region are fundamentally about reform of systems of governance, the economy and social structures. While security threats to the US are real, American policy cannot only be about carrying a "big stick".

Mr Romney maintains that the US should continue to commit overwhelming force "to have our way" in this region. After 10 years of tragic loss, with blood spilt on both sides and trillions of dollars spent on multiple wars, where has getting its way got the US?

Mr Romney's speech was full of many other shoulder-shrugging moments. Among the most memorable:

"Get tougher on Iran": What does that mean? Short of declaring war and trying to occupy the country as the US has done elsewhere in the region, there is little chance that the use of force by America or any other country will stop a determined Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

The alternative is more diplomacy and stricter sanctions, which the Obama administration has imposed with systematic efficiency. Iran's currency lost more than 40 per cent of its value last week, a clear indication of the effect sanctions are having under the current administration. At this point, a military strike would only rally public support for Iran's leadership and engender intense popular anger toward Iran's attackers.

"Do more for Israel": I have been involved in one way or another in helping ensure Israel's military edge for the last 25 years of my career, and at no time has US military, intelligence and security cooperation with Israel been closer than in the last three years under President Obama.

There is of course some daylight between the political positions of President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But what more would a President Romney do with or for Israel other than fight a new war? Quite frankly it is hard to imagine what else could be done to support America's friend and ally.

"See that the rebels get arms in Syria": OK, fine, but then what? Giving the rebels arms is the first and conceivably most slippery step on a slope that is likely to lead to full-scale US involvement in yet another effort at regime change in the Middle East. And what comes after the Assad regime in Syria could present a far worse long-term situation.

"Condition aid in Egypt and other countries": The US already does that, to a point. Most experts agree that cutting off aid to Egypt would greatly limit Washington's ability to further influence the reform process. The Morsi government knows well that the US might threaten to cut off aid and Congress might actually do it someday, but doing so would be the end of the US-Egypt relationship.

In Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, the Obama administration has encouraged Nato partners and allies in the Gulf, like the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to take more of an active and direct approach in policing their own region. This cooperation is not always perfect, but a refreshing and promising approach of burden-sharing and mutual responsibility for these problems has emerged.

In fact, many political leaders in the region would like to be treated as equal partners and want more military, intelligence and trade collaboration with the US, not less.

Meanwhile, strong Middle East allies have emerged, eager to collaborate with the US to maintain security and support countries in the throes of reform and change. It is important that whoever wins the US presidential election next month cultivates these key regional partnerships and formulates US policy that takes into account the hopes and dreams of the peoples of the region - two elements of foreign policy absent from Mr Romney's speech on Monday.



Danny Sebright is a Washington-based business and foreign policy analyst with over two decades of experience in the Middle East.

[giovanni_hotel]

OMK and Ms. Logan are suggesting we occupy Afghanistan for another decade and invade Pakistan, that way we can literally kill every extremist one by one until they're all gone.

What the right fails to understand is that the U.S. doesn't nor have they ever had the power to defeat an ideology. Ideologies are embraced or rejected by everyday people within a country.
Shooting bullets and dropping bombs only makes an ideology stronger.

We need to target militant Islamic radicals as necessary and keep Afghanistan and Pakistan contained. Until the people of those countries are sick and tired of being sick and tired, the mighty fist of Uncle Sam isn't going to beat them into submission.

Endless war in the ME and Islamic world, OMK?? Re-institute the draft and I'll think about it.

I still believe the threat of groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban is overstated by alarmists like Ms. Logan.
9/11 was a moon shot for Al Qaeda and they haven't come close to executing an operation on that scale since.

No Arab dictator is going to willingly turn over the control of his country to a terrorist group, so the belief that Al Qaeda will one day rule a nation is IMO far fetched.

Al Qaeda in the future will be regulated to the status of Hamas, a state sponsored terrorist organization that is a proxy army for x-country to strike at its enemies and terrorize its own people.

They are NOT a global threat. Neither is the Taliban.
When we leave the Taliban will revert to being on of the world's major suppliers of opium and subjugating their women like cattle. So be it.