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A huge majority of Americans favors investigation of Bush administration misdeeds. However, in releasing the results of the poll, Gallup chooses to spin their headline. First, here are the findings: [click to enlarge]
On the three questions, investigating politicization of the Justice Department, warrantless wiretapping and torture, 71%, 63% and 62%, respectively, favor investigation of one sort or another.
So how did Gallup spin the result? Their headline is "No Mandate for Criminal Probes of Bush Administration". That’s pretty bad spin, especially since, for all three questions, a huge majority favor investigations, and among those favoring investigations, more favor criminal probes than a "truth commission", or "independent panel" as they termed it.
There is further breakdown of the data into Democrats, Republicans and Independents:
I find these results fascinating. The drumbeat from the Obama Administration, the M$M and now even Senator Pat Leahy, is to "look forward" and, as Cass Sunstein would have us say, not "criminalize policy differences" while we settle for a Truth Commission over criminal investigations. Given that environment, it is astounding that on the issue of torture, fully 20% of Republicans, 39% of Independents and 51% of Democrats want criminal investigations. Can you imagine what those numbers would be if, instead of Kit Bond warning of "political firestorms" in response to criminal probes, we had daily reports on CNN and even Fox News of Binyam Mohamed having his genitals sliced with a scalpel?
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If you have difficulty reading the figures, most browsers allow you to magnify by holding down on “CTRL” and “+” at the same time.
I took the liberty of attaching your graphs to the larger versions, hope that’s ok. Click to enlarge.
Thank you!
DIGG is open.
IMHO, the seante has already found that war crimes were committed. AG Holder should just refer these cases to a Grand Jury for prosecution. IANAL.
I know, not gonna happen….but it should!
Good statistics, Jim. They tell me that lots more folks feel as I do.
reporting of acutal stats like this reminds me back when gore won the elction
I remember the new york times areticle reported “after recount bush really did win”
of course in differant words then that
then when you red the article, in every single scenario but one gore won the election
I was dumbfounded that was the new york times
and that was when I realized I needed a new source for my information
quick google search brings up the link
gore definately won, the new york times article said he lost, then you read it and there it was in black and white
“No Mandate for Criminal Probes of Bush Administration”
“Most favor investigations into controversial terror techniques, possible abuse of Justice Dept”–Gallup
Doesn’t the second sentence contradict the first?
You’d think so, but they’re parsing it based on there being less than 50% who want criminal investigations. It just doesn’t matter to them that even a “Truth Commission” would be uncovering criminal acts.
Wanted to note that I just saw this “discussed” at the tail end of Matthews’ show (no kidding, the very end). Sanger from the NYTimes shrugged and said something like, “well, Obama really doesn’t want this.”
Thanks. It will be very interesting to see how various news organizations present this information.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Perhaps there was a time when an overwhelming percentage of America would be loudly dwmanding an investigation and punishment. That happened with Nixon, but didn’t happen to Reagan.
Expectations are lower, possibly too low as some have said.
Senator Leahy has a Dkos diary up making his pitch for a truth-and-reconciliation commission.
The Supremacy Clause of Article VI makes ratified treaties binding law, and those ratified treaties require us to prosecute or extradite those accused of torture, no exceptions. Either President Obama is going to fulfill his Arrticle II obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” or he is not, in which case, he should be impeached in order to encourage future presidents to read their job description and take it serious.
The USA Today also spun this story. They didn’t come out and tell their readers that more of them wanted criminal prosecutions for torture (39%) than those who wanted just an investigation. The way the article was written gave people the impression that what the poll showed was that people just wanted investigations.
In fact, someone posting a comment to the Leahy piece on Huffington Post used the following snippet from the USA story to buttress their claim that Americans supported the truth commissions that Leahy offered.
I pointed out to them that what the poll showed was just the opposite.
39% favored crimnal prosecutions for torture
24% favored an independent panel (Leahy’s suggestion)
34% favored neither
3% had no opinion
You can tell by the way they wrote this story that they deliberately tried to obfuscate the results. Notice how they say 4 in 10 for criminal prosecutions but say a quarter and one-third for the other options. They are betting that most of the people seeing this will not do the math to compare apples to apples so they won’t know that more people want criminal prosecutions. It’s very sneaky and very disturbing but one thing it is not is accidental.
I haven’t seen the actual Gallup questions but the chart they published in USA Today bothered me because it showed
39% criminal investigation
24% independent panel
It’s as if they were trying to say that a criminal investigation would not be independent. I’d really like to see the actual questions they asked to see if this bit of bias was actually reflected in the questions.
Thanks for finding that. Over in the threads at Glenn Greenwald’s last night, we were looking at article headlines from stories quoting the poll. The big outlets all were doing their spin toward “move along, nothing to see here” while a few of the smaller ones seized on the 40% wanting criminal investigations.
It was great to see all the blowback that Leahy received on the kos website. I was even surprised to see a lot of blowback on the Huffington Post website because that site has a lot of “Obama can do no wrong” people posting on that site.
Thanks Jim. I’ll have to look at the comments at Glenn’s blog. I kept checking his blog last night to see if he had anything up on the Leahy post and the poll. I hope he puts something out today because he is so darn good at busting people who are deliberately deceptive.
I swear nothing shames these people. How in the hell did we end up with so many sociopaths in positions of power?
Scott Horton has an excellent piece about former Bush officials who have burrowed into the government and are blocking information to Obama about torture.
Did you see the Joe Conason piece? This is what Joe is saying:
What is he talking about? What considerably larger minority of nearly 40 percent that favor leaving these guys alone?
Thanks. I hadn’t seen that. I just tore him a new one in comments and am sending the comment to Joan Walsh, demanding they pull the piece immediately.
I loved your comment to him! I’ll be anxious to see what they do. Thanks for the assist.
Hey Jim, tune in to Hardball. They are going to talk about the Gallup poll after the commericial that’s curently on.
At least they used the real numbers.
Law and government are not fully involved with each other. You and I demand involvement between these two yet you and I are denied any voice in society. The problem is that you and I are not only ignored but also you and I are allowed nothing in life but life in their midst. If we ever have a chance to submit them to our rules we have one thing to say to them: live by ours.
If you agree with this post read my blog here.
- William
Please be more invisible and less insane.
Jim – I’m not sure whether you misunderstood my comment in support of your great post here or you’ve been utterly offensive.
- William
Thanks for this post, Jim.
There’s nothing to misunderstand. I tried to read your blog when you spammed it on the Greenwald thread. It’s totally unintelligible gibberish and you were ridiculed, there too.
Jim –
To quote you from another blog about your comment above to me here, “I wasn’t very civil…”. What you need to understand is that your comment is nothing but an utter offense of the grandest type. I demand an apology on here and the other blog where you referenced this post.
- William
Walter Jones, GOP Congressman, Signs On To Investigating Bush