Lara Logan - 2012 BGA Annual Luncheon Keynote Speech

CBS News Correspondent Lara Logan addresses the Better Government Association's annual luncheon.

Her speech included several blistering critiques of US government assertions about the state of al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, and she offered the following as part of the rationale for her recent 60 Minutes report on the topic: "I have never missed a year of the Afghan War ... and I knew that we were being lied to, and the American people were being misled, and when it comes to issues that I care about, like issues of national security, I don't think that politics should dictate your national security policy. And I don't know a journalist that likes being lied to, so that really set us on this path."

South African reporter Lara Logan, a veteran foreign correspondent who while on assignment in Egypt in 2011, was captured, stripped naked, beaten and raped by an angry mob.

On the heels of the violence in Libya in September, it is difficult to dispute Logan’s argument despite statements to the contrary by the Obama administration.

Logan, who has been covering the Middle East for many years, wrote a report on September 30 titled “The Longest War” focusing on the conflict in Afghanistan.

While Barack Obama no longer sugar coats his rhetoric on the campaign trail by having his surrogates boldly claim that Mitt Romney is a liar, Logan refutes the president’s own honesty in his Middle East policies.

Powerful and emphatic as Logan’s comments were however, they were likely not strong enough. Like bin Laden, it matters little whether Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are vanquished because Islamic terrorism will continue to exist. Destroy one and another arises. So long as Islamic fundamentalism continues its war against the world, it is insignificant what name terrorism gives themselves because they all spring from the same root.

Logan is passionate in her argument that the American people are not being told the truth about the strength of the enemies we face in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Speaking from intense personal experience she sounds the alarm when she says, “You are not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

The Obama campaign’s tactic of calling Mitt Romney a liar is a dangerous gamble. Even more dangerous however, is the lie the president is perpetuating with the American people.

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