Six in 10 Americans say the CIA’s treatment of suspected terrorists was justified, more than half think it produced important, unique intelligence – and 52 percent say it was wrong for the Senate Intelligence Committee to issue a report suggesting otherwise.
Those results in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll underscore the public’s sense of risk from the threat of terrorism, and specifically the extent to which majorities support controversial measures to combat it. Indeed just two in 10 flatly rule out torture in future cases.
A plurality, 49 percent, believes the CIA did in fact torture suspected terrorists; 38 percent think its actions did not amount to torture, with the rest unsure. Regardless, the public by a broad 59-31 percent also says the agency’s interrogation actions were justified.
One reason is that 53 percent think these interrogations produced important information that could not have been obtained any other way. Just 31 percent reject this claim, a focus of the recent debate.
So yeah, solid majorities in favor of "enhanced interrogation techniques" because they work, and got us intelligence we could not have otherwise gotten, and that the Senate Democrats should never have released the report at all.
47% found the report unfair to the CIA, and 57% think there should be no charges against those responsible (only 1 in 3 want to see prosecution.) Hell, even 46% of self-identified liberals and 46% of registered Democrats believe the CIA actions were justified.
The majority of the country is no different from Dick Cheney in this respect. Some 13 years after 9/11, we're still a nation of bloodthirsty monsters. Politically this issue is a loser for team D and they know it, and you'd better believe we'll hear over the next two years how those weak, Neville Chamberlain liberals should never be allowed to be in charge of foreign policy anymore.
Yay Team Torture! America is firmly a charter member, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.
Speaking of bloodthirsty monsters, do you ever read the op ed page of the Wall Street Journal?
ReplyDeleteI look at that rag every now and then for laffs. Usually it has a mishmash of the crazy stupid and and the odd window on the conservative soul, but at times they toss in a column that makes you projectile vomit from the sheer evil it contains.
Today emetic was bylined some hack attorney from the Bush era, bragging that the torture was legal while insinuating that the American people begged, begged I tell you, the honest brokers of the Bush administration to keep the nation safe by Any Means Necessary.
I was there, all this stuff was only fifteen years ago where I am still annoyed by the Great Rebellion and the need to torch Atlanta and teach Jeff Davis a lesson in impotence, and I remember events quite differently from the revisionist hoohaw this partisan is shoveling. The key point being that the Bushistas swarmed into office with certain fixed goals in place and a ruthless determination to see them through, primarily that America was special and that we could do any damned thing we wanted. They treated 9/11 as a gift from heaven, a policy skeleton key that allowed them to do anything, anything at all.
As I remember it the turning point on torture came when their beloved invasion of Iraq turned up none of the alleged WMDs that had been the pretext for the whole mess. Orders came down from the top: FIND THOSE CHEMICAL WEAPONS and the interrogations ramped up to 11. Uselessly, of course, for torture is great for producing false confessions but useless for spinning accurate intelligence out of thin air.
So who are these 49% who love torture? I don't know, but we as a country need to do something about them as well as our official status as a nation that tortures.
So who are these 49% who love torture?
ReplyDeleteHorace, those folks would be yer fetus-fetishists, yer gun toters, yer Bible thumpers,
... those who still harbour a grudge about the War of Northern Aggression, and those who think its a big laugh when the cops kill a black man...
Not to forget yer climate change deniers, yer evolution deniers, yer Fox News viewers...
In short, yer "GOPers".