60 Minutes Up To Its Old Tricks
By Roger Aronoff
April 3, 2008
CBS's 60 Minutes offered up a cleverly deceptive story that makes the U.S. government and military look extremely evil, building on a narrative that continues to damage American interests at home and abroad. The story, shown on March 30, was presented in such a way as to convince the audience that it has discovered some awful truths about a man held prisoner in Afghanistan and later Guantanamo, and finally set free after years of torture and abuse. The problem is that CBS left out or glossed over significant information that might have made viewers wonder if this man was really telling the truth. Clearly 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley wanted the viewers to believe he was. But the truth might not be so clear.
The man is Murat Kurnaz, a German of Turkish descent, who apparently had begun studying Islam in Germany before the horrific acts of radical Islamic terror that occurred in this country on September 11, 2001. According to his story, he had planned a trip to Pakistan to study his religion before the events of 9/11 occurred, and went even after they had. He says that in late 2001, he was removed from a bus taking him to the airport in Pakistan as he was preparing to return home, by Pakistani police, because he was light-skinned, and obviously of European descent.
This, he says, was the start of a nightmare of torture and abuse that lasted years, and even years after the FBI and American intelligence agencies knew he wasn't guilty of anything. He was held as an enemy combatant and released from prison after nearly five years, at the request of German Prime Minister Angela Merkel. Now he has written a book - Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo - which CBS seems more than happy to promote. He has claimed he was a victim of waterboarding, electric shock, days of being hung up by his arms, and humiliation by being taunted by scantily clad women. He also says he witnessed the Koran being desecrated in front of him. These last allegations weren't mentioned by 60 Minutes.
During the course of the report, 60 Minutes flashed some documents and carefully pulled out some apparently damning quotes, but a closer examination raises disturbing questions about CBS's reporting. For instance, Pelley says that Kurnaz's lawyer obtained documents from military prosecutors that claim he had consorted with someone who was a suicide bomber, but who was actually alive. Pelley asked with obvious incredulity, "you either are or are not a suicide bomber, right?" Well, not necessarily. How about someone who provides the explosives, the belt to strap it on, and the indoctrination that leads someone to commit such acts? In other words, this suicide/homicide bomber more likely just sends people further down the pecking order to carry out such deeds. But in this case it appears this person was confused with someone else with the same surname. Besides, the document says only that the person is "possibly" a suicide bomber, and you would only see that if you paused your TV recording at the just the right place.
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