Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney remains its defender and advocate, but a new national poll shows rising public distaste toward waterboarding and using torture against suspected terrorists.
Approval numbers went up, however, when the poll substituted the term “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
The survey by Angus Reid Public Opinion found that 49 percent of those responding disapprove of waterboarding, 33 percent of them strongly. Thirty-nine percent approve of the technique being applied to terror suspects.
The Angus Reid survey, of 1,010 American adults, asked the broader question: “Overall, do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies is justified?”
Just 13 percent answered “Always justified,” and 21 percent “Justified most of the time.” More people answered “Justified only sometimes” (25 percent) or “Never justified” (30 percent). Ten percent were not sure.
During the Bush administration, however, top government officials coined a less ominous term, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” to describe certain procedures to retrieve information from terror suspects.
“Critics have said the term is a euphemism for torture,” Reid reported.
The pollster found that the term inspires much less reaction than “torture.”
Angus Reid asked the question: “Overall, do you think the use of enhanced interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies is justified?”
The “Always justified” (26 percent) and “Justified most of the time” (31 percent) figures rose, while “Never Justified” fell to 15 percent.
America’s political divisions were reflected in the poll’s findings.
“Overall, a majority of Republicans agree with the use of torture on terror suspects … and the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. They also condone the use of waterboarding (58 percent),” Angus Reid reported.
“Almost half of Democrats justify the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, while 30 percent justify the use of torture and the same proportion agrees with officials using waterboarding on terror suspects.
“Most Independents think enhanced interrogation techniques are acceptable (60 percent), but fewer justify the use of torture (32 percent) and waterboarding (43 percent).”
The poll was conducted Feb. 19 to 21, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.
