CBS News and "60 Minutes" reporter Lara Logan said a "major lie is being propagated" about the presence of al Qaeda in Afghanistan by the U.S. government in a speech delivered over the weekend.
"I knew that we were being lied to, and I knew that the American people were being misled," Logan said of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, of which she says administration does not acknowledge publicly its actual presence.
"We kept hearing the same thing time and time again, which is, ‘There’s 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?’" Logan said.
"At one point, we had in writing from the U.S. military that al Qaeda in Afghanistan was off the table," Logan continued.
"I can’t stand that there’s a major lie being propagated about the real situation," Logan said in the speech. "I don’t care who’s in power, I don’t care who’s behind it."
Logan then detailed a long line of generals, including Gen. John R. Allen (of whom Logan speaks highly otherwise), that have told her that the Americans are building relations with Pakistan.
Logan also spoke at length about the motivations of those fighting in the Middle East and misconceptions about the current Taliban in Afghanistan.
"What’s the one thing about Afghanistan that’s going to come home to haunt us? What we have done there for the last 11 years, our role in the Middle East, our role across the world, our way of life is under attack," Logan said. "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," Logan continued.
"Go and visit Walter Reed sometime, or Bethesda National Medical Center as it’s called, take your family to Arlington Cemetery and see the fresh graves that have been dug—that are not, those soldiers haven’t been put in the ground by Hamas and other people on the terrorist list," Logan said, "they’ve been put there by al Qaeda, the Taliban, Haqqani, and the Pakistani government and all those people who want to destroy the United States, the West, and our way of life."