The Caledonian Record – Vermont’s local paper with all the hard-right-wingnuttery of a Michelle Bachmann communications shop with about five times the crazy (no, not kidding) has an egregious “poll” up.
It wouldn’t necessarily matter, but we do live in the only state where goony internet polls are taken seriously as news items by professional reporters, and are presented with a straight-face as legitimate tools of public policy (thank you, Representative-Doctor Till), so this goes a bit beyond embarrassing. The (Broken) Record will no doubt treat readers to a slew of slobbering, torture-fetish editorials if it’s right-wing readership predictably give the result they’re fishing for.
So by all means, if you have a spare moment, when was the last time you freeped a poll? Here’s the link: http://caledonianrecord.com/index.asp?PollID=209#PollSection
Those who regard it as torture are now at 58%.
In just about any other Vermont paper, this would represent the “duh” factor.
…they didn’t include this in ‘defining’ waterboarding:
“A new fad among Vt. Teenagers this rainy spring.”
Next they’ll have an idiot poll about about defining what is sexual misconduct and what is not, depending on how important a big-shot is involved.
Just look at the picture. It fits just about everyone’s image of torture. Bound and hooded man strung out on rack. Thug wearing what appears to be a hat common to Ireland, suggesting the NRA. Perhaps I’m wrong, but using this image along with the question isn’t biasing someone toward the use of torture. Now, if they had an arab looking man on the rack with a white man asking “where did you hide the nuclear bomb?”, then I’d agree with the premise.
I believe the caption at the top of the “poll” illustrates the fundamental difference between respondents to this question.
For some, “them” is an implicit way of saying terrorists.
For others, “them” is us.
I recall seeing that very image in the past:
It was painted by Vann Nath, a victim of Khmer Rouge torture, as one of a series of paintings of Khmer Rouge torture methods.
The simple test of whether something is “torture” is to consider how we would regard it when used against us as opposed to us using it against “them”.
The bar for torture would be far below waterboarding.