Let’s not kid ourselves: Most Americans are fine with torture, even when you call it “torture”

NOVANEWS

Did whites ever give Native Americans blankets infected with smallpox?

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s five-year investigation into the CIA’s torture of suspected terrorists just came out. There’s plenty in there to shock — for starters, just go to the document and search for “rectal feeding.” The Post has compiled a list of 20 key takeaways from the report, which detail a regime of brutality, incompetence and deceit that have been damaging to the U.S.’s standing abroad.Good luck trying to convince many Americans of that, though. Polls have shown a public generally supportive of the use of torture to gain information from terrorist suspects, at least in some circumstances, and even when you flat out call it “torture.”

In 2009, the Pew Research Center found that 49 percent of the public said that “the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information” can “often” or “sometimes” be justified. This belief was held by 64 percent of Republicans, 54 percent of Independents and 36 percent of Democrats.

Including the number who say that torture can rarely be justified, 71 percent of Americans accept torture under some circumstances.

torture

Overall 25 percent of respondents said torture could “never” be justified. Fourteen percent of Republicans said the same, compared to 38 percent of Democrats.

While these figures are from 2009, a more recent YouGov poll from 2012 showed similar levels of support for torture among the public overall. A 2014 report by the advocacy group Amnesty International found that U.S. respondents were more supportive of torture than people in other wealthy Western countries.

NOVANEWS

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