Lara Logan in Cairo, reporting for CBS News

The details are slight, but it makes the story no less disturbing:

"60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan suffered a "brutal and sustained" sexual assault at the hands of a large group of men while covering the Egyptian uprising, CBS News said.

It happened during Friday's jubilation in Cairo's Tahrir Square after President Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down.

"A dangerous element" in the crowd surrounded Logan and her crew, said CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco. "It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy. In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew," he said in a statement Tuesday.

"She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers."

Logan went home to the United States on the first flight Saturday and is recovering in a hospital, Tedesco said. [..]

At least 140 reporters have been injured or killed covering Egypt since Jan. 30, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Logan's personal life has been fodder for tabloids--and I'm not entirely sure some of it wasn't furthered by DC types threatened by her no-nonsense reporting of the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and her lack of fear of calling out pundits (aka Fox's Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham) for their studio armchair war coverage heavy on spin and light on facts--but for the sake of her husband and child, I hope that the media respects her desire for privacy on this. It would be truly horrible to learn that she had been victimized quite so brutally again by pro-government forces because of her desire to report the truth on the ground.

This segment originally aired in November of 2007. I am a big opponent of the death penalty in general. It's unfairly applied with minorities disproportionately receiving it, studies show it offers no deterrent to other crimes and the thought of even one innocent person executed wrongly makes it just horrifying to consider. We are the only Western country that still has the death penalty and the fact that we stand with countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China in executing prisoners should not be a point of pride. We at one time at least held to the standard of not executing the mentally ill or retarded, but even that no longer holds as James Clark of Texas or Greg Thompson above show.

If you are interested in working towards the abolishment of the death penalty, contact Amnesty International for information on what you can do.

skippy the bush kangaroo: The impertinent skippy had the gall to write to three journalists, questioning them on why the press corps insisted on framing Obama as "arrogant" in the presidential seal story when McCain's own senatorial campaign committee did the same thing. Two ignored him, and another reacted the way royalty always does.

The Brad Blog: 10 things to know about Charlie Black

the age: Why are Americans so scared of women? (h/t swimgirl)

Truthdig: Scott Ritter on "The Nuclear Expert Who Never Was."

naked capitalism: The End of Exceptionalism? IMF to examine US financial system

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Real journalists don't make $5 million a year...Customs agents seizing reporter's laptops and cameras without cause...Media & Govt. torture coverup continues...Broder and Woodward's lame alibis...Beatblogging...A fair & balanced Russert obit...Fox does a story about voter fraud, cites NO voter fraud...Dowdy...Tweety...Lara Logan being smeared for her criticism of Iraq war coverage...McClatchy and the downsizing of journalism...Glen Beck wouldn't detain terror suspects, he'd ‘Shoot Them All In The Head'...NOW's Media Hall of Shame...How to pretend you give a sh*t about the election

Lara Logan is a big C&L favorite because she's been in a war zone and not backed down from right wing narratives. She joins Jon Stewart and rocks the house down with this astute observation of the American media.

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Stewart: Do you watch the news that we're watching?

Logan: No

Stewart: ...in the United States? Do you see what we're hearing about the war? So, we might actually know everything?

Logan: If I were to watch the news that you hear in the United States---I'd just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts.

Really?

Are the Villagers watching? Do you hear?

On 60 Minutes Sunday Lara Logan interviewed Pakistan's President dictator Pervez Musharraf about accusations that he may be to blame for the assassination of his chief political rival, Benazir Bhutto, and what exactly he is doing to combat the resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda, whom his government claims was behind her killing, and whether his government is even trying to find Osama bin Laden.

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On all counts, Musharraf's answers were lacking. He repeatedly denies that he was to blame for anything at all and points fingers elsewhere, callously blaming Bhutto for her own death by saying that "it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers." Apparently, in his mind, the man who climbed up on the back of the car and shot her in the back of the head and the suicide bomber who blew himself up and everyone else around had nothing to do with it.

Now I don't know whether or not all of the rumors are true that Musharraf or his government actually had a part in Bhutto's death or whether he should be held accountable for denying her repeated requests for more security, but he certainly did himself no favors in this interview to convince anyone otherwise. It's simply ridiculous to blame her "alone" for her death, and his refusal to accept blame for anything, his claims of successes in combating extremists in his country despite all the evidence to the contrary and his apathy towards whether or not his government is even looking for Osama bin Laden was - well - eerily Bush-like.

UPDATE: (Nicole) Some scary drumbeats being heard as far as Pakistan. According to the NY Times, the US is considering covert push in Pakistan (how covert it can be when it's in the NYT is another story), which Tom Hayden at HuffPo also weighs in on as well with a warning to Barack Obama to ratchet back the rhetoric. Moreover, given the news coming out in international circles (because you'll never hear about it in the US media) from Sibel Edmonds about our own actions in allowing Pakistan to develop their nuclear program, can we afford to take such an aggressive stance against Pakistan without risking any lingering goodwill we still hold on the global stage?

(full transcript after the jump)

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Thank the higher being of your choice for journalists like Lara Logan. While Katie Couric stays in the Green Zone and with heavily guarded escorts through a security-cleared market, Logan goes in and slogs through bio-hazardous waste and shows us exactly how much "success" our tax dollars have bought in Afghanistan.

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Remember this post I did when Lara blasted the right wingers and Laura Ingraham in particular who were saying the media was biased against the war and afraid to leave their hotel balconies to report all the wonderful stories in Iraq?

Media Channel:

Logan asks for help in getting attention to what she calls “a story that is largely being ignored even though this is takingplace every single [sic] day in Baghdad, two blocks from where our office is located.”

The segment in question–”Battle for Haifa Street”–is a piece of first-rate journalism but one that only appears on the CBS News website–and has never been broadcast. It is a gritty, realistic look at life on the very mean streets of Baghdad, and includes interviews with civilians who complain that the US military presence is only making their lives worse and the situation more deadly. “They told us they would bring democracy, they promised life would be better than it was under Saddam,” one told Logan.“But they brought us nothing but death and killing. They brought mass destruction to Baghdad.”

Here's the video...

From: lara logan
Subject: help

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CBS Evening News with Lara Logan featured Jill's release last night.
TMV reports: "Christian Science Monitor correspondent Jill Carroll's release did have a price — a fee paid in the form of a propaganda statement she was ordered to videotape, her paper reports"

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CSM: The night before journalist Jill Carroll's release, her captors said they had one final demand as the price of her freedom: She would have to make a video praising her captors and attacking the United States, according to Jim Carroll. In a long phone conversation with his daughter on Friday, Mr. Carroll says that Jill was "under her captor's control."

Joe Gandleman has a great round up.

Digby writes about Jonah Goldberg:

"He reminds of one of those guys who says a rape victim didn't act traumatized enough for him, so she's probably lying...read on

Powerline and Think Progress get into it.

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Lara Logan smacked down the "negative Iraq War Coverage" charges She's very outraged over these chargers...

I'll have the video up a little later. The media was assailed all week by the administration trying to pass the meme that the press is too negative. Instantly, the right wing pundits picked up the theme. Howard Kurtz, who told Wolf Blitzer that the coverage on Iraq is too negative also received an earful from Lara Logan.

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(Transcript via CNN's Reliable Sources)

KURTZ: But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.

LOGAN: Well, who says things aren't falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn't see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.

What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn't see on our screens? I mean, we've reported on reconstruction stories over and over again…I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we're not reflecting the true picture here. That's totally unfair and it's really unfounded.

...Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can't you find them? You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked.

I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

On conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's recent statement that journalists need to do less "reporting from hotel balconies" in Iraq

LOGAN: I think it's outrageous. I mean, Laura Ingraham should come to Iraq and not be talking about what journalists are doing from the comfort of her studio in the United States, the comfort and the safety.

I mean, I don't know any journalist that wants to just sit in a hotel room in Iraq. Does anybody understand that for us we used to be able to drive to Ramadi, we used to drive to Falluja, we used to drive to Najaf. We could travel all over this country without having to fly in military helicopters.

That's the only way we can move around here. So, it's when the military can accommodate us, if the military can accommodate us, then we can go out and see.

I have been out with Iraqi security forces over and over again. And you know what? When Bob Woodruff was out with Iraqi security forces and he was injured, the first thing that people were asking was, oh, was he being responsible by placing himself in this position with Iraqi forces? And they started to question his responsibility and integrity as a journalist.

I mean, we just can't win. I think it's an outrage to point the finger at journalists and say that this is our fault. I really do. And I think it shows an abject lack of respect for any journalist that's prepared to come to this country and risk their lives. Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked. I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

She also kicks Laura Ingraham's "hotel balconey" remark around too.

Update: Atrios:

"It's ridiculous that anyone in our media is entertaining the notion seriously the charge that they're underreporting all the great stuff that's happening in Iraq. As someone who experienced the civil, Peter Daou understands that while life goes on in the midst of such things the news it not in fact that "life goes on" - it's that 30 people were beheaded....read on"