A Brief Word From the MSM

September 28th, 2010 by zen

For reasons that are obscure to me, a staffer at CBS named Jen felt it was important that I share this embed of Lara Logan recounting the risks of reporting recently in Afghanistan. There’s also a camera guy named Ray who is a Vietnam veteran and a former Marine who is kind of an interesting character in his own right. Since a number of ZP readers are either there now, have been to or are going to Afghanistan soon or are Marines or are veterans of the war in Vietnam – this might possibly be of some interest to them.

And with that, here you go, Jen.

UPDATE:

Heh. This video is best viewed in iE and not Chrome or some other browser.

Posted in Afghanistan, army, Failed State, insurgency, islamic world, media, war | 10 comments

Previous post:
Next post:

  1. Mithras:

    September 28th, 2010 at 3:53 am

    Is anyone else having problems watching the video because it’s half cut-off over to the left? Maybe it’s my browser (firefox)?

  2. zen:

    September 28th, 2010 at 4:00 am

    Hi Mithras,
    .
    Yes, there is a problem with the embed code they sent me. It views in iE. CBS probably should test their embeds on multiple browsers before emailing them out. 🙂

  3. Mithras:

    September 28th, 2010 at 4:07 am

    zen, what a novel idea. 

  4. YNSN:

    September 28th, 2010 at 8:16 am

    Couldn’t watch it, doesn’t work in Firefox, let alone the bandwidth issues in Afghanistan…

    Honestly, I don’t give a damn about how dangerous it is for reporters to work in AFG.   Nor is it interesting to me.  If they think the job of the press is noble, then the inherent dangers of their noble profession wouldn’t be news worthy. 

    All in all, I take this a cop-out.  In that, the reporting from Afghanistan is nearly nonexistent.  No one in the States, to include most of the Government has a clue as to what it is like, or what is going on out here. 

  5. zen:

    September 28th, 2010 at 11:05 am

    Hi YNSN,
    .
    Well said.

  6. Arherring:

    September 28th, 2010 at 3:37 pm

    I happened to catch the story itself and found it very interesting. These are elements of the 101st airborne responsible for large areas on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border and the commanders of these soldiers make it very plain that they control very little territory in the areas that they are responsible for, the Taliban controls the rest (and is unfriendly at best if not outright hostile), and their number one problem are foreign fighters crossing the border from safe havens in Pakistan.

  7. Lexington Green:

    September 28th, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    The blond woman reporter with the accent is good looking. 

    What else was going on again? 

  8. Lexington Green:

    September 28th, 2010 at 11:38 pm

    I love where she says in a high, girly voice, without a helmet on, with her flowing blond locks tumbling down over her cool combat-ish shirt, "you guys got ya body ahmuh?" 

  9. YNSN:

    September 29th, 2010 at 4:10 am

    Want to know what the problem is with COIN?  Almost all of us go out during the day, and do our thing, and then turn around and go home back inside the wire at night. 

    There is no such thing as presence.  A central tennent of COIN is to live amongst the people.  We. Aren’t. Doing. That.

  10. J. Scott:

    September 29th, 2010 at 2:07 pm

    And to punctuate your point YNSN; we won’t persist.