Torture: some want it used, others don't. Who they are.

The ticking time bomb scenario, a thought experiment, asks what to do to a captured terrorist who has placed a nuclear time bomb in a populated area. If the terrorist is tortured, he may explain how to defuse the bomb. The scenario asks if it is ethical to torture the terrorist. A 2006 BBC poll held in 25 nations gauged support for each of the following positions:<59>

* Terrorists pose such an extreme threat that governments should be allowed to use some degree of torture if it may gain information that saves innocent lives.
* Clear rules against torture should be maintained because any use of torture is immoral and will weaken international human rights.

An average of 59% of people worldwide rejected torture. However there was a clear divide between those countries with strong rejection of torture (such as Italy, where only 14% supported torture) and nations where rejection was less strong (Israel showed 43% supporting torture, but 48% opposing, India showed 37% supporting torture and only 23% opposing).<60>

Within nations there is a clear divide between the positions of members of different ethnic groups, religions, and political affiliations. The study found that among Jewish persons in Israel 53% favored some degree of torture and only 39% wanted strong rules against torture while Muslims in Israel were overwhelmingly against any use of torture. In one 2006 survey by the Scripps Center at Ohio University, 66% of Americans who identified themselves as strongly Republican supported torture, whereas 24% of those who identified themselves as strongly Democratic.<61> In a 2005 U.S. survey 72% of American Catholics supported the use of torture in some circumstances compared to 51% of American secularists.<62> A Pew survey in 2009 similarly found that the religiously unaffiliated are the least likely (40 percent) to support torture, and that the more a person attends church, the more likely he or she is to condone it; among racial/religious groups, white evangelical Protestants were far and away the most likely (62 percent) to support inflicting pain as a tool of interrogation.<63>

{Footnote links:
59. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6063386.stm
60. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6063386.stm
61. http://www.newspolls.org/story.php?story_id=59 --- broken, this works: http://www.newspolls.org/articles/19606
62 http://web.archive.org/web/20080612093225/http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006a/032406/032406h.htm
63. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/07/67612/commentary-why-do-we-tolerate.html }

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture