Tag Archives: LARA LOGAN

The Obama Image: Illusion or Reality?

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“The very media, founded on communications and automata, especially television, can communicate illusion as well as reality, and that is all right as long as we know the difference.” Dr. William O. Baker, patriot genius and former leader of research at Bell Labs from a speech at Northwestern University, July 12, 1976.

“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” – Barack Obama, from WhiteHouse.gov

Some folks in the mainstream media, which was largely responsible for building up Barack Obama from nothing and then provided cover for him for so long while he was hacking away at the freedoms and institutions of our great country are beginning to realize Obama is a threat to them. Join the club. But what took you so long?

Last weekend, Susan Page, USA Today’s Washington Bureau Chief admitted,

“My big fear is that this administration has been more restrictive and more challenging to the press, more dangerous to the press, really, than any administration in American history in terms of legal investigations and so on.”[i]

The Transparency Illusion.

The Transparency Illusion.

The description of Sharyl Attkisson’s new blockbuster book due for release on November 4th says,

“Americans are at the mercy of powerful figures in business and government who are virtually unaccountable. The Obama Administration in particular has broken new ground in its monitoring of journalists, intimidation and harassment of opposition groups, and surveillance of private citizens.”[ii]

Attkisson is a former Emmy award-winning, Washington-based correspondent for CBS News.

Describing why she decided to write her new book, which is titled, Stonewalled: My Fight For the Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation and Harassment in Obama’s Washington , Attkisson said,

“It’s a look at the increasing attempts by political figures, special interests, and corporations to manipulate the images that the public sees in the news and in the rest of the media. I’ve never seen a tougher clampdown on freedom of the press and I think it’s important that someone stand and say these things and speak out about ‘em.…I think the public needs to learn to watch the news much as you do a TV commercial. You need to start thinking ‘why is that story airing, who pushed it, what special interest might be behind it and am I getting the full story.’”[iii]

“This is the most transparent administration in history, and I can document how that is the case.” – Barack Obama February, 2013, Google’s Fireside Hangout.

Here is the opening of a letter to President Obama from the Society of Professional Journalists dated July 8, 2014:

“Mr. President, You recently expressed concern that frustration in the country is breeding cynicism about democratic government. You need look no further than your own administration for a major source of that frustration – politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies.”[iv]

Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times commented on the secrecy within the Obama Administration in an interview with Al Jazeera News. This was on January 21, 2104 before she got the hatchet at the Times:

“I would say it is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.

“The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It’s on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with.”

The interviewer then follows up and asks, “And do you think this comes directly from the president?”

Jill Abramson: “I would think that it would have to.”[v]

In a 2013 appearance with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation Abramson said,

“The Times and our readers are quite concerned about the six active criticism leak cases that the Obama administration has pursued. That’s more than all the other administrations combined. And, you know, we are concerned that the process of news gathering is being criminalized.”[vi]

Lara Logan, an investigative journalist for CBS’s 60 Minutes gave a very public speech in 2013 where she said,

“I knew that we were being lied to and I knew that the American people were being misled.”

“…officials in the administration love to tell us today that there are only fifty al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. And the impression that we’re given is that they are one drone strike away from obliteration. And that’s just simply not true. They know it’s not true.”

“…we kept hearing the same thing time and time again is that you know there is no political reason for anybody to be talking to you about this right now because if we talk about al Qaeda in Afghanistan doesn’t that undermine the argument for leaving?”[vii]

While I’m glad some in the media are finally waking up to the stonewalling, the lies and the deceit of this administration, I‘m afraid a lot of damage has already been done to our country. The American people need to wake up too before it’s too late.

Sincerely,

An American

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” – Winston Churchill

“If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?” –John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

[i] http://www.westernjournalism.com/watch-usa-today-washington-bureau-chief-rips-obamas-destruction-free-press/#p6Qxm8TzhzuhhP4J.99

[ii] http://sharylattkisson.com/stonewalled-book

[iii]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzMf2ETp5X8&feature=youtu.be&list=UUvVeMsVltaaACXhlvLoFstA

[iv] http://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=1253

[v] http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/talk-to-al-jazeera/interviews-and-more/2014/1/21/jill-abramson-talkstojohnseigenthaler.html

[vi] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/02/jill-abramson-doj-eric-holder-meeting_n_3375035.html

[vii] http://media.wrko.com/a/64591441/lara-logan-cbs-news-reporter-gives-a-bone-chilling-speech-about-al-qaeda.htm

LARA LOGAN’S WARNING

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Many Americans who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 with the hope that he would patch things up around the world and usher in a new era of peace may be pleased with his performance so far. But pulling our troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 as the President has promised will not be the end of it. The Obama administration has been misleading the American people about the resurgence of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and is downplaying the threat of Islamic fanaticism to our national security. Some may think this is simply right-wing propaganda. They would do well to listen to Lara Logan, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News. Logan has been covering the war in Afghanistan as an investigative journalist since the war began in 2001, some of it behind enemy lines and so she is probably worth listening to.

Ms. Logan recently put together a disturbing story that ran on 60 Minutes about the resurgence of al Qaeda and their Taliban allies. Not long after, she gave a speech in Chicago to the Better Government Association to explain why.

“I knew that we were being lied to and I knew that the American people were being misled.”

“…officials in the administration love to tell us today that there are only fifty al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. And the impression that we’re given is that they are one drone strike away from obliteration. And that’s just simply not true. They know it’s not true.”

Why would the Obama administration mislead us about the state of al Qaeda and the threat still posed by Islamic terrorism? My guess: electoral politics. Logan hinted at this when she explained the resistance she experienced during her investigation.

“…we kept hearing the same thing time and time again is that you know there is no political reason for anybody to be talking to you about this right now because if we talk about al Qaeda in Afghanistan doesn’t that undermine the argument for leaving?”

Team Obama keeps leading us to believe that al Qaeda is on its knees and near extinction. They obviously feel the need to convince enough voters of this in order for the President to get reelected to a second term. But the killing of Bin Laden does not translate into victory over al Qaeda as this administration would have us believe. Ms. Logan made herself very clear when she said, “there’s a major lie being propagated about the real situation.”

Why is this so important? It’s because of the life and death nature of the problem and the consequences for the future of our country.

“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….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.”

Logan warned of the danger of not facing up to the reality of who our enemies are and what they want.

“Our way of life is under attack and if you think that’s government propaganda, if you think that’s nonsense, if you think that’s warmongering, 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, but you don’t. There’s two sides and we don’t dictate the terms. In fact after eleven years of war in Afghanistan, where we’re surrendering, where we’re rushing for the exits as fast as we can, not only do we not dictate the terms, but we have less power to dictate anything on the world stage.”

Obama’s policies, the policies of the left have made us weaker. Their willingness to perpetuate a false sense of security for political calculation needlessly makes us more vulnerable. This choice has caused us to let our guard down. Proof of this may be found in the recent murder of Chris Stevens, our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. We now know despite the Obama administration’s initial explanation that in reality the act was a pre-planned, well-armed terrorist attack on our embassy on the anniversary of 9/11. The Obama administration was simply caught with its hands down. Logan made the point that

“For me, 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.”

So Lara Logan decided to speak out, not as a journalist, but as a patriotic American sounding the warning bells against an enemy that is often forgotten, but still determined, still waiting to strike. She made it clear that in her opinion the Obama administration has not been forthcoming with the American people about the danger that Islamic terrorism still poses to our national security. Back in 2008 did President Obama think he could solve our problems with the Muslim world by extending a false hand of friendship to our enemies and by making an apology tour? – All signs of weakness. Why yes, he did and so did some others. But if you listen to Lara Logan, a courageous reporter who knows her subject well, the enemy that killed nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11 has not been defeated. They are very patient and they will not easily surrender.

Logan summed it up well when she warned of the consequences of the current policy to withdraw from the war on terror,

“What we wanted to do was to leave people with a sense of something… something that I honestly believe will come back to haunt us as it did before. It’s almost like ground hog day in Afghanistan. Just as Charlie Wilson’s War – Charlie Wilson said, if you turn your back on Afghanistan now you are going to pay a price. And we didn’t believe him. And then it was 9/11.”

Readers can hear Ms. Logan’s speech at http://media.wrko.com/a/64591441/lara-logan-cbs-news-reporter-gives-a-bone-chilling-speech-about-al-qaeda.htm

Canutus