They usually say something along the lines of "do you support torture if American lives are at risk?", implying that torturing random suspects will help prevent terror attacks, when in fact the opposite is true.

The poll question should be "do you support torture even if it puts American lives at risk?"

I'd be curious to see the actual questions,
sampling method, and demographics.

They get the answer they want - the corporate media have no interest in democracy or human rights.

and there always has been.

it would come out that the majority of Americans would say that that was justified too and support it.

I don't believe polls anymore. I believe the results are made up based on the situation and the issue - so as to sweep things under the rug. Now Congress can say the People are ok with it - so we don't have to prosecute the war criminals.

I really believe if it came out that 9/11 was MIHOP - that there would be a poll to justify that.

I'm so embarrassed by this country. We've fallen so far into an abyss of immorality it isn't even funny. If people came back from the dead - they wouldn't recognize it as the same country. It's really, really sad and we're all so helpless to turn that around.

Next week this torture report will be old news and we'll have some new crisis to get inflamed about.

How about we all should be worried about 'lone wolf attacks' like the one in Sidney.

I don't know how a majority of our Congress can look themselves in the mirror in the morning and believe that they are serving their constituencies.

Americans love the idea people are raped in prison and consider it part of the punishment.

We are not a leader of human rights. That's the reality. And it seems Americans don't even care.

But, setting aside the actuarial honesty of those who summed up the data... we might want to ponder how and why the Cheney administration psy-op that produced this public opinion was so remarkably successful. We might also wonder where it will take us.

For at least a decade Americans have been bombarded with reports of the utility of torture. Fanciful tales whose moral was the ends justify the means were repeatedly suggested. Nightmare scenarios presuming dark ends that could not and cannot be known a priori in the real world have been used to justify torture to prevent mushroom clouds or dispersing clouds of radioactive detritus of dirty bombs, anthrax, or nerve agents.

And the lesson of that avalanche of "news" from the mouths of Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, etc, was learned, such that when asked if torture is ever useful, many Americans recalling that media-indoctrination say yes, as if asked a true-false question on a middle school history exam. And they'll respond that way even while they find torture abhorrent because we are a nation that loves 'right answers' on quizzes.

The effects of this "evidence planting" in our memories is very dreadful business. As a nation the public has moved to believing that tough-guy attitudes and delivery of violence are core-concepts of heroism (on edit: note there is today a post that a minister is now suggesting Jesus, perhaps our culture's greatest hero, would use torture). That twisted view, which may well be held by roughly half of Americans, incorporates sadism in the ultimate expression of patriotic defense.

Because the nation evokes patriotism as motivation for domestic as well as international problem solving, this cannot end well in any domain of consideration.

Manufacturing Consent

thoughtful and probing analysis. Can't praise your work here highly enough, save to perhaps note that my wife points out that the media (Hollyweird and LA Times included) actively collaborated in this 'race to the bottom'.

Would it be OK if I shared your post to FB (using your DU screenname for attribution)?

white male Americans would have approved of slavery too (subject to various qualifications). And Abolitionists (of varying degrees of militancy) would have been a distinct minority at the time.

Not sure where I'm going with this, save to point out that majority support for a policy or practice never conferred morality upon that policy or practice. America is an amoral nation, its various hypocrisies and santimonies aside. It allows 1 in 5 of its children to experience at least one episode of hunger each month, so expecting it to take a principled stand against torture is expecting a bit much.

Americans are citizens of empire now and this is how empires behave.

Watching CNN or going to their site is pretty much torture (or comedy depending on your point of view). So of course 51% Americans that still watch or visit their site would love torture.

Next time they should ask the whole country. The results would be strikingly different, me thinks.

See what I did there?