Torture memos

[classicman]

I went looking for polls on torture. Incredibly, it's nearly impossible to find any polls. The only recent poll was in December by ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Amazingly, neither ABC nor the Pentagon Post published the results, as far as I can tell:

"Just your best guess, do you think the U.S. government as a matter of policy is or is not using torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism?"

Torture Using Not Using Unsure
12/15-18/05 56% 39% 5%
5/20-23/04 51% 43% 6%

"Would you regard the use of torture against people suspected of involvement in terrorism as an acceptable or unacceptable part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism?"

--------------Acceptable Unacceptable Depends
12/15-18/05--------32%------ 64%----- 3%

So what do we learn from this data?

Despite Bush's repeated lies that "the U.S. does not torture," Americans aren't fools. In 5/04, a 51%-43% majority believed the U.S. was torturing prisoners; by 12/05, that majority increased to 56%-39%. Now that Bush has admitted we use "alternative methods" to interrogate prisoners - which everyone else calls torture - that majority should be trending towards 100%-0%.

And how do Americans feel about our use of torture? By 2:1 (64%-32%), Americans consider torture of terrorism suspects to be unacceptable.

Link
I'm not sure of the validity of this, but it is rather damning.