On Feb. 11, CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan was in Tahrir Square covering the celebration after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak announced that he would step down.
According to a statement released by CBS, she was working on a story for “60 Minutes” when a mob of several hundred people descended on Logan and her team. She was separated from her team and their security in the crush of the mob.
Logan then suffered what CBS described as “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.” She was only saved when a group of women and members of the Egyptian military were able to intervene on her behalf.
A sick story to say the least.
And the most maddening thing is that the men who are guilty of violating Logan will likely never be brought to justice.
One would like to think in a situation like this everyone, even if they disagree with Logan’s views, could at least muster up some sympathy for her situation and have a sense of outrage at the low-lifes who brutalized her.
But that is apparently asking too much for some people.
Like, say, Nir Rosen. Rosen is a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security.
A widely-published independent journalist, Rosen has numerous stints in the Middle East under his belt and has authored a book. He’s not a fringe radical by any stretch of the imagination.
So when he took to Twitter to criticize a news correspondent who had been sexually assaulted and beaten, people noticed.
The compassionate leftist, anti-war journalist tweeted the following:
“Lara Logan had to out-do Anderson (Cooper). Where was her buddy (Gen. Stanley) McCrystal?”
“Yes, yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too.”
Rosen then went on to explain why he hated Lara Logan so much. 
Apparently Rosen was convinced that she supported the Iraq war — in his twisted mind, a war monger.
“... at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger,”
“Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women, which is still wrong, but if it was worse, then I’m sorry.”
Apparently, at some point, Rosen’s fellow Twitter users spoke up. Because he responded with this:
“ah ---- it, I apologize for being insensitive, it’s always wrong, that’s obvious, but I’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she will get.”
Then, once he presumably realized that, on a wide-open forum on the Internet, he had criticized a well-known news correspondent who had been sexually assaulted, and that reprisals could result, Rosen apologized:
“i apologize and take it back. joking with friends got out of line when i didnt want to back down. forgot twitter is not exactly private”
Not exactly private for sure. And I bet he is sorry. Especially on Wednesday when he “resigned” his position as a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security. His official story is that he didn’t realize how severe the attack was, so he was too harsh on Lara Logan.
However, even if the attack hadn’t been as bad, even if Logan hadn’t been sexually assaulted or beaten to the degree that she was, Rosen’s tweets without a doubt crossed a line. Even if Rosen thought he was just exchanging jokes about the incident with friends, his comments were indefensible. Nir Rosen showed just how hateful he is towards someone who wasn’t against the Iraq war.
And thankfully he’s paying for it. 
As for Lara Logan, she spent several days in a hospital recovering from her injuries and is now recuperating at her house in the Washington D.C. area.
I hope and pray that she is able to overcome her physical and emotional injuries.
(Elijah Friedeman, author of The Millennial Perspective, is the grandson of Janis Friedeman, Great Bend. His columns can also be heard on his father, Matt Friedeman’s, radio program on American Family Radio.)