Gallup Poll Underestimates US Disapproval of Human Rights Abuses at Gitmo

[Time for change]

Several days ago I noted in a DU post my opinion that much polling done in our country is superficial, since it fails to delve into reasons for peoples’ beliefs – for example, one common reason for a belief is insufficient understanding of the relevant facts. Since then, I found an illuminating example of that opinion, which one can understand by comparing a recent Gallup poll with a World Public Opinion.org poll (of Americans) on the abuses of human rights (actually, war crimes, as Vyan recently pointed out) that our government has been perpetrating on detainees at Guantanamo Bay for the past five years.


The Gallup poll

According to the most recent Gallup poll on this issue, taken in May of 2006, only 41% of Americans think that the Bush administration has “gone too far” in “restricting peoples’ civil liberties in order to fight terrorism” (up from 11% in June of 2002). 19% believe that the administration has not gone far enough, and 34% think that it’s about right on this issue.

Now, this question does not directly address the issue of our treatment of our suspected terrorist prisoners, at Guantanamo or elsewhere. It simply refers to “people”, and unfortunately the Gallup poll does not directly address opinions about the treatment of our prisoners. But, since “people” is a much more inclusive term than “prisoner”, I believe that one can logically assume that the 41% represents the maximum percent of Americans who believe that we have “gone too far” in restricting the civil liberties of our prisoners, and that the actual percent is somewhat lower than that.

Why do only 41% of Americans – or less – believe that we have gone too far in restricting the civil liberties of our prisoners (which is really putting it very mildly, given the indefinite detention under abysmal conditions and the numerous reports of torture, suicide and other deaths), given the world’s vocal outrage over our abuses of the human rights of our prisoners?


The World Public Opinion.org poll

The World Public Opinion.org (WPO) poll, which fortunately was taken the very same week as the Gallup poll, provides an answer to that question. According to that poll, 63% of Americans say that we should change our practices at Guantanamo, in accordance with the recommendations of the UN Commission on Human Rights – and only 30% say that we shouldn’t. Why such a huge difference? It seems evident to me that the reason for the large difference in these two polls is that the WPO poll provides some background on this issue before asking for a response. Here is the poll question:

As you may know, the US participates in the UN Commission on Human Rights, which reviews human rights standards in various countries including the US. Recently the Commission has evaluated how the US treats detainees at Guantanamo Bay and determined that the US has held certain individuals for interrogation for several years without charging them with a crime, contrary to international conventions. Do you think that the US should or should not change this practice according to the prescriptions of the UN Commission on Human Rights?

Conclusion from comparing the two polls

A minority of Americans say that they believe that the Bush administration has gone too far in restricting anyone’s civil liberties when they are asked that question without being provided background information on the subject. But when provided pertinent background information, Americans by more than a two to one margin say that we should change our policies to comply with international standards on human rights. This strongly suggests that the only reason why the good majority of Americans do not currently feel that the Bush administration is "going too far" in abusing the rights of our prisoners is that they are ignorant of the relevant facts. And of course we have our corporate media largely to thank for that.



One more slightly off-topic issue

Lastly, I feel the need to say one more thing about this, even though it’s somewhat off the topic noted in the title of this post, and even though most DUers are probably well aware of this. I feel the need to add this because it upsets me so terribly :mad: and because I believe that it says so much about what is happening to our country and about the fitness of our current “leaders” to hold high public office.

Though the Bush administration tries very hard (successfully to a large degree) to make us believe that most of our detainees are subhuman and dangerous “terrorists”, the reality is very different. Consider the following:

Major General Antonio Taguba, following his investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, determined “A lack of proper screening meant that many innocent Iraqis were being detained – in some cases indefinitely.” And Taguba added that 60% of civilian prisoners at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released.

The International Red Cross said that between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Captain James Yee, former Muslim U.S. Army chaplain, who provided ministerial services at Guantanamo Bay for several months, comments throughout his book, For God and Country, that the more he got to know the prisoners the more difficult it was to picture them as terrorists, or criminals of any kind, while providing numerous details to support those conclusions.

Jimmy Carter has pointed out in his recent book, “Our Endangered Values”, at least 107 of our detainees have been identified as being under the age of 18, with some are as young as eight years old.

In 2002, General Michael Dunlavey, the former deputy camp commander at Guantanamo, lamented the number of innocent prisoners filling the prison and flew to Afghanistan to complain that too many "Mickey Mouse" prisoners were being sent to the base.

Aziz Huq notes in this article concerning the relevance of the Geneva Conventions to our treatment of prisoners:

There is real doubt about whether substantial numbers of Guantánamo detainees have any connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban… Congress and the American public are still slowly learning that Guantánamo detainees are in fact innocent of all conduct, that we have been frittering away our money, manpower and reputation not on the “worst of the worst,” but on shepherds and farmers because the {Bush} administration declined to sort the innocent from the guilty.

[Joanne98]

1. Gallup is soooo biased towards Bush. They have zero credibility

[Time for change]

7. Well, they certainly often fail to go into much depth with their questions

But I’m not sure what you mean by biased. What do you think they might do that would be biased?

[azurnoir]

2. I have felt

all along that Gitmo had little to do with gathering intelligence. What then is it psychological warfare, we can grab you, ship you off, and hold you forever. This is why some stories are allowed to leak out-just to let anyone thinking about joining a terrorist organization what can happen to them. This is I believe more aimed at people in the US, than in the ME.

[Time for change]

4. Why do they do it?

I have asked myself that question over and over again. Here is an excerpt from a previous post of mine, where I attempt to answer that question (and I’ve seen nothing to change my mind since then).

The inhumane treatment of our detainees from our “War on terror” appears to serve little or no useful purpose. There is little or no evidence that most or even many of these prisoners even have a substantive connection with terrorism, and in any event, their abusive treatment appears to have provided little if any useful information, according to numerous knowledgeable sources. Jonathan Weiler said in the summer of 2005 that perhaps Amnesty international chose the wrong words when they referred to Guantanamo Bay as the “Gulag of our times”. Now he is re-thinking that assessment:

… certain questions have to be increasingly asked: to what lengths will the Bush administration go to stretch and mutilate language, to torture out of all meaning any prohibitions on executive authority? What will stop it from demeaning any claim the inalienable right to be free from cruelty and torture?

The only reasonable explanation that I can see for Bush Co’s inhumane treatment of prisoners is that they hope this will legitimize their “War on terror” in the eyes of the American public, with the ultimate purpose of allowing themselves to assume dictatorial powers – which they have already largely done. If anyone has a better explanation I’d like to hear it.

Some Americans accept the disgraceful and illegal treatment of our prisoners because they have bought into the lie that this is a necessary evil, conducted for our protection. Those people should be asking themselves, “If Bush Co continues to get away with this, who will be next?”

[justgamma]

3. I would like to know

at what point in the torture, do they decide that "oops", guess he doesn't know anything. You can release an innocent from prison, but you can't take back the torture.

[Time for change]

5. It appears that prisoners aren’t often released just because torture

doesn’t elicit information.

Here is some info from the book written by the U.S. Army Muslim Chaplain whom I referred to in the OP:

As of the writing of Yee’s book, in late 2004 or 2005, approximately three years after the onset of the Afghanistan war which provided the bulk of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, 550 prisoners remained there, and 242 (many who have spoken out about the inhumane treatment they endured) had been transferred or released. Yet only four had been charged with crimes of any kind! And according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “Guantanamo detainees were subject to physical and psychological cruelty tantamount torture”.

What on earth is the reason for this? I think that a clue is provided in Seymour Hersh’s book, “Chain of Command”, where he quotes an anonymous high level official:

“No one in the Bush Administration would get far if he was viewed as soft, in any way, on suspected Al Qaeda terrorism.” Yet despite all this, “One consistent theme has been a lack of timely and reliable intelligence about the other side.”

I think that the Bush administration realizes that the only thing they have going for them is that many or most Americans think that Bush is “strong on terrorism”. By filling our prisons with “dangerous terrorists” and treating them harshly they maintain that illusion.

Enough said.

[RagAss]

6. I've seen Gallup several times on my caller-id...

.....I just let it ring. What's the sense of answering. They'll scrap my responses and publish whatever helps Karl and the shrubby....

[Time for change]

10. I don't agree with that - if you look at their final polls for each of the

last four elections, as a whole they weren't too far off:

In 1992 their last poll had Clinton beating George H W Bush by 12 -- which over-estimated Clinton's victory margin.

In 1996 they had Clinton beating Dole by 11 -- which again over-estimated Clinton's victory margin.

In 2000 they had Gore and Bush in a tie, which was very close to the final margin, which Gore won by a half a percentage point.

2004 is difficult to assess, since there is good reason to believe that substantial election fraud took place. If you look at the official results, the final Gallup poll under-estimated Bush's final victory margin slightly (It had Bush winning by 2). Of course we don't really know what the real figure should be for the nation-wide popular vote (though there is very good evidence that Kerry should have won Ohio.)

[smokey nj]

8. I wonder if there is a geographic bias in these polls

as well. Higher quotas for red states, counties than blue ones. This is just something I suspect, if anyone can confirm or deny, I'd appreciate the information. I used to work for a market research firm, but most of their work was commercial, there was only one political job while I was there and that wasn't a poll.

[Time for change]

9. I doubt very much whether there would be a geographical bias

It is standard poll methodology to guard against geographic bias by either choosing respondents randomly, or stratifying by geographic area to ensure that all major geographic areas are represented proportionally.

There are a couple of sources of bias that are more difficult to guard against. One is non-response bias. A certain percent of subjects chosen for polls either refuse to participate or they cannot be reached (maybe because they don't have a telephone). If those subjects who don't participate differ from those who do in relevant respects, the poll could be biased. But generally that type of bias doesn't differ too much between different polls.

Probably the main source of bias that distinguishes between different polls, when assessing voting preferences, is in the determination of "likely voters". Most polls that present voting preferences do so on the basis of "likely voters", and different polls use somewhat different criteria to define "likely voter". However, that would not be an issue in the poll that I discuss in my OP.

I do have a link to a document that discusses the methodology used in these polls, but I don't have that with me now. I will send it later.

[Time for change]

11. Here's the link to their methodology

http://media.gallup.com/PDF/FAQ/HowArePolls.pdf

They use a random sample of U.S. adults, so that should ensure a valid distribution by geographical area.

I hope this link works for people without a Gallup account - I think it will.