Legal Commentary

Public Wants Torture Investigations

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

If you are reading this blog via the RSS feed — and my logs suggest that is what most readers do — then all of a sudden you are missing out as the comments sections have gotten a lot more lively than they used to be.

If you want to play along, you could either read the blog the old-fashioned way, or you could subscribe to the Comments Feed. Your choice.

Meanwhile, a propos comments, someone recently suggested there that the public had little interest in seeing whether we have war criminals in our midst, and in bringing to justice any who ordered torture. Turns out that’s wrong: Research 2000 Poll: Americans Want Investigations,

A significant majority of Americans responding to this week’s Research 2000 poll want to see some kind of investigation into the Bush administration’s abuses of power.

Asked whether they would prefer a criminal investigation, independent panel, or neither in the use of the Justice Department for political purposes, torture, and warrantless wiretaps, strong majorities in every instance approved some kind of investigation, either in a truth commission type panel, or a criminal probe.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 4/27-30. Registered voters. MoE 2%. (No trend lines)

Question: As you may know there have been allegations that the Bush Administration used the Department of Justice for political purposes. Which of the following would you favor the most a criminal investigation into those allegations or an investigation by an independent panel or neither?

Independent Panel 36
Criminal Investigation 29
Neither 18

Question: There have also been allegations that the Bush Administration engaged in torture in terror investigations. Which of the following would you favor the most a criminal investigation into those allegations or an investigation by an independent panel or neither?

Independent Panel 31
Criminal Investigation 22
Neither 22

Question: There have also been allegations that the Bush Administration used telephone wiretaps against American citizens without court warrants. Which of the following would you favor the most a criminal investigation into those allegations or an investigation by an independent panel or neither?

Independent Panel 33
Criminal Investigation 23
Neither 21

Those are significant majorities in every category for some kind of accounting into Bush administration abuses.

The public is slow to rouse, but also slow to forget.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on May 01, 2009 (boomark / email).