Poll: Americans And Westerners Are Becoming 'More Comfortable' With The Policy Of Using Torture And Harsh Interrogation Techniques

Shane T. McCoy / Reuters

Kimberly Dozier, Daily Beast: Red Cross Poll: Americans Warm to Torture and Indiscriminate Bombing

An International Red Cross poll shows more Americans and other Westerners than ever before are OK with harsh tactics, yet those under fire still hope the laws of war apply to them.

Bombarded by President-Elect Donald Trump’s election rhetoric promising to step up the campaign against the so-called Islamic State, Americans are more likely to accept torture and indiscriminate bombing of suspected terrorists than they were two decades ago, according to a poll by the International Committee of the Red Cross released Monday.

The majority of those surveyed across more than a dozen countries including the United States still think bombing of populated areas and torturing detainees is wrong, according to the WINS/Gallup International poll, released by the ICRC. But rising numbers of people, especially Americans and Britons, said they are willing to accept less humane practices if it means winning the fight faster.

Yet the survey also showed that people in places like Syria and Yemen believe the laws of war are needed, in an almost wistful expression of hope for a humanity that is absent in two conflicts that have killed civilians by the hundreds of thousands.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: These are the poll numbers now .... but all that it will take is one major terror attack .... 9/11 or worse .... and these poll numbers will overwhelmingly shift to "do what it takes" to bring to justice on those who committed such a crime. I recall too well after 9/11 how many of my American liberal friends shifted their altitudes on what will need to be done to get Osama Bin laden .... shocking even me with what they wanted to do .... and how these same American liberal friends shifted a few years later back to their default position in regards to torture and harsh interrogations.