CBS's Logan on Iraq: 'We're Doing Extremely Badly,' Don't See Dead Soldiers

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Asked by Jay Leno on Monday's Tonight Show “how are we doing” in Iraq?, CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan asserted that “we're doing extremely badly” and proceeded to fret, that since images of dead American soldiers are “hidden,” the public does not realize the situation is “much worse than the picture, the image we even have of Iraq.” As for the impact of the “surge,” Logan, who reports regularly from Iraq, allowed that it is “working in certain places,” but only “temporarily” because “if you haven't altered the fundamental dynamics” then you “still have the same problem.” Logan's full answer to Leno's question about how the U.S. is doing in Iraq:

We're doing extremely badly, from my point of view. I was asked if I felt any guilt for the fact that the world has an impression of the war in Iraq as being very bad and going very wrong? And I said I really don't because I can't imagine the last time anyone saw a dead American soldier. We've hidden that from view. Nobody knows what that looks like and I've seen plenty of it. It's much worse than the picture, the image we even have of Iraq.

Video clip (30 secs): Real (900 KB) or Windows Media (1 MB), plus MP3 audio (180 KB)

On the October 15 Tonight Show taped in Burbank, California, Leno also inquired about the surge:

LENO: Does the surge seem to be working, not working? As a reporter, what do you see?

LOGAN: I see it working in certain places, temporarily. But if you haven't altered the fundamental dynamics -- if you still have a government that's sectarian in nature, if you still have an army that's corrupt, infiltrated by militias, you haven't changed anything, at all. You still have the same problem. And what happens when those soldiers go home? Because they're not going to be there forever.