by WorldTribune Staff, November 2, 2016
While gleefully cheering the Arab Spring unrest of 2011 that brought down Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton completely ignored one of the ugliest scenes in Cairo, the brutal rape of CBS News journalist Lara Logan.
“Hillary Clinton claims to have championed the cause of women and girls over her years in public service,” journalist Margaret Menge wrote for PoliZette on Nov. 1. “But as a woman and a journalist, I can’t forget what she didn’t do for Lara Logan — when she was in the exact right position to do so much.”
In February 2011, Logan was sexually assaulted and beaten by 200-300 men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“Four years after the assault, Logan was still in and out of hospitals being treated for internal injuries,” Menge wrote. “This year, she dropped out of journalism, and left the East Coast with her family to live in a small town in Texas.”
None of Logan’s attackers were ever caught.
Clinton made no public comment about the attack on Logan.
Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley, when asked about it, called the attack on Logan “deplorable” and said the United States had called for an investigation.
In the same briefing, Crowley called the protests in Tahrir Square “magnificent” and lauded the Egyptian government for not using force on the protesters, saying it was “vital” for Egypt and other nations in the Middle East to “respond to the needs and aspirations of their people.”
The same day as Crowley’s comments, “Clinton announced that Egypt was going to get more money courtesy of U.S. taxpayers,” Menge wrote.
“Egypt would get, through the State Department, an additional $150 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money — in addition to its regular $1.3 billion for its military and $250 million in economic assistance. The new funds were ostensibly to help that nation with its transition to democracy, which ended up being a transition instead to rule by the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Menge noted that there were reports that President Barack Obama had personally called Logan to offer his sympathy.
“There is no report that Logan received any such call from Clinton, who as secretary of state managed our nation’s relationships with other countries, and who was in charge of the embassies that exist around the world to protect American interests and to help Americans in peril while traveling abroad,” Menge wrote.
“It was as if Clinton’s focus as secretary of state was elsewhere, and the brutal rape of a prominent American journalist by a huge mass of men in the middle of a foreign capital was of no consequence.”
In April 2011, Logan came forward to describe in detail what happened in Tahrir Square, “telling how her bodyguard had been overpowered and pulled from her, but how she had clung to him with one hand as the men ripped off her clothes, beat her, ripped off chunks of her scalp, and raped her with their fingers so severely that she believed she was dying. She told how they had laughed and jeered at her, and how the more she screamed out in pain, the greater their glee, and how they took pictures with their cellphones as she was violated and beaten.”
Neither Clinton nor the State Department issued any comment following Logan’s comments.
“As a woman, and a journalist myself, one who has lived and traveled abroad, I can’t help wonder: How could a woman, who is serving as secretary of state, refuse to do anything, when she is in the exact right position to do so much?,” Menge wrote.
Hillary Clinton ignored rape of CBS journalist during 2011 Egyptian unrest added by World Tribune on
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