Another day, another emetic: it's sickening, it's torture

[IDemo]

Emetic: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/DG/00022.html">(uh-MET-ik). A substance, such as syrup of ipecac, that induces vomiting.

Today we learn from an AP_Ipsos poll that "most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea feel torture is acceptable at least on rare occasions".

61% of Americans. 9 of 10 of South Koreans. Just over half in France and Britain. Apparently, incredibly, nearly as many people who feel that Bush has done a poor job with the Iraq conflict (don't call it a war), mysteriously also feel that the end justifies the meanies when it comes to gaining strategic info. Even though the prevailing thought on torture is that it is a highly unreliable method for gaining anything useful, and can even be counter-productive.

And this week, we have Condi, our alternately smiling and glaring Secretary of State, touring the European Union to advise/warn/threaten against protests or other interferences with the CIA's Terrorist Frequent Flyer program.

Our president declares that the US does not torture, and briefly, fondly, remembers blowing up frogs. His VP grimaces, Condi-like, and lobbies furiously to protect America's Right to Torture. Hell, maybe make it a Constitutional amendment while we're at it. And don't forget what the *!#^ it's all for; the oil, black and sticky, just like me!

Apparently torture is somewhat acceptable, according to many. Or could it be that simply being an aware American in the first decade of this Millenium is just plain torture?

[AuntPatsy]

1. Sickening..

[agincourt]

2. Years ago,

people would have been offended to be asked that question and would have refused to answer. It would have been against their dignity to endorse torture even if they were for it. Now we're a nation of hedonistic materialist psuedo-christian torture groupies. Maybe that will be our next big heavy metal or country western star, a guy or gal who tortured rag-heads.

[EstimatedProphet]

3. I swear, Satan is walking the earth

It gets worse every day. I expect polls to say soon that murder is a virtue, and stepping on newborn babies should be an Olympic sport.

[Alcibiades]

4. Here’s another headline: 59% of Americans Reject Torture

It depends on how you cut the data. We both know that this should be a yes/no answer, but they decided to include four options in response to the question if torture can be justified “often,” “sometimes” “rarely” or “never.” This here is a bogus way of going about it. If you slice the data another way, by lumping the “rarely” and “never” categories together, you’ll find that torture is opposed by: 59% of Americans, 70% of Canadians, 58% of Mexicans, 43% of S. Koreans, 65% of French, 68% of Germans, 74% of Italians, 70% of Spanish and 69% of the Brits.

Also, it is worth noting that the modal response, in every country except South Korea, was that torture can “never” be justified. This result is far more in line with the other main result of this poll, which was to show that most folks (except Americans), strongly oppose the use of secret American torture prisons abroad. People likely interpreted the first question very differently, depending upon national contexts—it would seem not to be related to the second question, until after the second question is asked. How else can we explain the fact that the respondents who were most likely to say that torture is sometimes justified, the South Koreans, also opposed secret American torture prisons by 71%? (of course, the question was whether they thought it would be OK if the US brought terrorists to their own country for the purposes of torture. Maybe the Koreans think they have enough problems without calling that particular whirlwind upon themselves.)

In all, I don’t think it’s all that sickening.

[IDemo]

6. If "only" 41% of Americans, or about 120 million, find torture -

acceptable "often", or "sometimes", that is truly sickening. That it is being defended by our leaders makes it much more so.

[Alcibiades]

7. If the poll is accurate, the figure is 85.5 million

Let’s leave the kids out of it. The adult population (and this was a survey of adults, I presume) is 220 million, so the figure approving of torture “sometimes” or “often” is about 85.8 million (the percentage of those approving of torture “sometimes” or “often” is 39%--numbers don’t add up to 100 due to the 3% who were “not sure.”)

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot about the American public’s opinions. One of the main things we’ve learned is that they are pretty dumb. (Converse, 1964) This question, as written, assumed an awful lot of knowledge, or at least reflection, on the part of the respondent (i.e., how often “suspected” terrorists turn out to be actual terrorists, the inefficiency of torture versus other means of questioning, what “often,” “sometimes”, etc. actually mean, how torture is bad for the international image of the US, etc.)

In this case, we are reducing four categories to two. Why not do that in the original question? Every student of public opinion knows that responses can be an artifact of question wording. If we are going to treat this as a yes or no referendum on torture, we should have data from a question that is a yes or no question on torture. For example:

Senator John McCain, a victim of torture during the five and a half years he was held as a PoW in Vietnam, has come out strongly against the use of torture by the current administration. Do you agree or disagree with his position?

Or

It is always wrong to torture prisoners, even in wartime. Do you agree or disagree?

Either of these questions would yield different results. There’s also the strong possibility that the issue is tainted by partisan politics—I suspect that the 39% who approved of torture are Republicans, many of whom may not actually, in their heart of hearts, approve of torture, but who nonetheless responded in a way they think supports Bush’s position.

In short, the result may be an artifact of question wording, and the forcing of responses into four categories where that may not be appropriate. It’s worth noting that this particular item was not used as the headline by the pollsters themselves. Their headline? “Most Living In Eight Countries Allied With U.S. Want Nothing To Do With Secret Interrogation Of Suspected Terrorists.” I suspect that they found that the way the other question was worded produced ambiguous results, and so went with the other question, which was an agree/disagree item. Yet even that item appears worded in such a way as to maximize support for Bush: there’s no reference to torture, only the phrase “secretly interrogate.”

[tocqueville]

5. I think that those polls are not showing the real perception

A lot of people think of extreme situations, like the famous "he knows where the concealed atomic bomb is - millions have to be saved".
Those situations are so hypothetical that the answers that follow are kind of a logical "in that case an exception is acceptable"...

Putting torture into SYSTEM is a different assessment. I don't see the majority of the French or British today condoning the excesses from the Bush administration. Because they have own experiences (both ways). This despite the fact both countries have been lately hit by terrorism.