@parados,
parados, Here's one of many news reports about the 183 times in one month.
Quote:Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month
By: emptywheel Saturday April 18, 2009 11:57 am
I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.
@revel,
More from that poll, as well as data from a new poll, here:
The Obamas, riding high
Quote:In the AP poll, 64% approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president, while 30% disapproves. Here there is some slippage: Obama's approval rating in January was still 74%.
Congress, on the other hand, is actually increasing in popularity, though admittedly from a low baseline. 38% now approves of its performance, compared to 31% in February and 24% in December. [..]
When it comes to the question whether Obama understands "the problems of ordinary Americans" and "the important issues the country will need to focus on during the next four years," about half thinks he understands them very well, and another quarter thinks he understands them "somewhat well".
Quote:Striking as always - but not reported enough when faced with Republican claims that they voice significant popular dissatisfaction - is just how negatively Americans view the Republican opposition.
While opinions about Democrats are fairly evenly balanced - 50% approves of the way the Democrats in Congress are handling the economy, 45% disapproves - the Republicans are down to minimal support. Just 29% approves of the way the GOP in Congress handles the economy; 65% disapproves.
Similarly, while 61% thinks Obama is doing enough or even too much to cooperate with the Republicans, just 32% thinks the Republicans do enough or too much to cooperate with Obama.
Quote:The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, is highlighting the popularity of Michelle Obama, reporting on another poll, conducted by the Pew Center on April 14-21. She is extremely popular, even for a First Lady, as a historical comparison reveals:
Quote:The public's opinion of the first lady runs even higher than its opinion of the president [..]. That's not unusual -- first ladies generally don't become ensnared in the political controversies that can weigh on a politician's public image. But this first lady outpaces recent predecessors: At 76 percent, she ranks higher than Laura Bush did in July 2001 (at 64 percent favorable) and higher than Hillary Clinton did in May 1993 (60 percent).
Michelle Obama also is reaching across party lines: 67 percent of Republican women hold a favorable view of her, up 21 percentage points since January.
Quote:The Pew poll, of course, yielded plenty of data about Barack too. The interesting part about Pew's report is that it includes historical comparisons. How is Obama doing compared to his predecessors at the 100-day mark?
On job approval, Pew finds Obama at a 63% approval rating - almost identical to AP's result. That's better than Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. were faring at this point in time, whose approval ratings all hovered around 55-58%. It's more in line with where Carter and Reagan were [..].
Pew did not just ask respondents how well they thought Obama was handling his job; it also asked whether they had a favourable or unfavourable impression of him. The 73% who answered (very or mostly) favourable constitutes a slight drop from January, but is still up from any point last year. Moreover, it's a considerably higher favourability rating than either Clinton (60%) or Bush Jr. (61%) enjoyed at this time.
Quote:Majorities of respondents in the Pew poll approve of specific decisions by the Obama administration, such as closing Guantanamo (51% to 38%) and permitting federal funding for most embryonic stem cell research (63% to 27%). Republican criticisms such as that Obama is not pushing U.S. interests hard enough, or that he is trying to tackle too many issues, are supported by just one in three respondents.
(The AP poll has near-identical numbers rejecting the charge that he is tackling too many issues, and adds that just 28% agrees with the remarks that suddenly started popping up [..] a couple of weeks ago that Obama is on TV too much. [..])
Quote:According to the Pew poll, 63% believes he has a new approach to politics while 27% believe he means business as usual. One in four voters actually thinks he's been doing better than expected, while just 9% believes he's done worse.
Conservative tea-baggers may believe Obama is the devil incarnate. We may be smarting from moves by the Obama administration that we consider half-hearted or even cowardly. But among the electorate at large, he is still very much the President of hope and change.
@okie,
Evidently the majority of Americans care.
@okie,
Everyone but a minority of you hardcore holdouts .
@okie,
You care, okie. Look, you
even posted polling data yourself!
On the other hand, maybe you only care if the data seems to agree with your opinion....
@old europe,
Quote:On the other hand, maybe you only care if the data seems to agree with your opinion....
And this is new?
EVERYONE, on all sides of politics, seems to discount and ignore any and all data that disagrees with them.
Its for that reason that I have always said that I find polls to be a tremendous waste of time and essentially meaningless.
@mysteryman,
No, it's not new. That's why I find it commendable when people are consistent in their attitude towards polling data and either acknowledge that there are polls out there that show that a majority of those polled disagree with their personal opinion, or when people simply don't pay attention to polls at all.
However, I find it disingenuous to post polls and present them as important evidence when they agree with your opinion and then turn around and trivialize them when they don't support your argument.
@old europe,
Quote:No, it's not new. That's why I find it commendable when people are consistent in their attitude towards polling data and either acknowledge that there are polls out there that show that a majority of those polled disagree with their personal opinion, or when people simply don't pay attention to polls at all.
And I have said, all the way back to the old Abuzz days, that IMHO polls are meaningless.
If you word the question correctly, you can get the majority of the people to agree that Hitler and the Nazis were the greatest force for good on the planet.
Quote:However, I find it disingenuous to post polls and present them as important evidence when they agree with your opinion and then turn around and trivialize them when they don't support your argument.
I 100% agree.
However, to be fair, people on both sides of the political aisle here on a2k are guilty of that, yet I havent seen much (if any) criticism of those on the left that do the same thing.
I am not defending okie, because he is wrong, I do think the criticism is one sided however.
@mysteryman,
mm, Polls are meaningless to you, because it tells the truth about where you conservatives stand - not only during the last presidential campaign and election, but where your esteemed Bush now stands.
It must hurt real bad. Facts do that some times.
@mysteryman,
mysteryman wrote:And I have said, all the way back to the old Abuzz days, that IMHO polls are meaningless.
We may disagree on the value of polling data, but I certainly appreciate that you're consistent in your attitude towards polls.
mysteryman wrote:old europe wrote:However, I find it disingenuous to post polls and present them as important evidence when they agree with your opinion and then turn around and trivialize them when they don't support your argument.
I 100% agree.
However, to be fair, people on both sides of the political aisle here on a2k are guilty of that, yet I havent seen much (if any) criticism of those on the left that do the same thing.
I couldn't tell you on which side it's more prevalent. I don't really have the data.
That said, I simply would assume that generally, conservatives are more inclined to attack liberals for being inconsistent, and vice versa. I'm sure I'm guilty of that.
mysteryman wrote:I am not defending okie, because he is wrong, I do think the criticism is one sided however.
Oh, sure, the criticism of okie's inconsistency might be one sided - coming mostly from those on the other side of the aisle. Then again, I would imagine that if I were to make contradicting statements within a couple of posts, it would mostly be conservatives who would attack me over my inconsistency.
I don't think that's
necessarily evidence of a double standard. I don't expect someone to play consistency police and monitor every other poster's statements for contradictions. I'm completely happy if someone says "Yeah, that's inconsistent!" when contradictions are being pointed out - no matter whether or not you otherwise agree with the political point of view of that person.
@old europe,
It's obvious mm has not kept up with nimh's posts on polls.
@Foxfyre,
The presence of an MD and psychiatrist isn't relevant to that particular comment, though. If they need to do it to the same person, that many times, it just isn't working.
Op-Ed Columnist NYT
No Time for Retribution
By ROGER COHEN
Published: April 22, 2009
Language is lethal. The Bush administration’s legal memos opening the way to torture are a reminder of the intimate link between a bureaucrat’s lawyerly subordinate clause and a man’s near drowning.
Now we all know what “interrogation with enhanced techniques” means: an insect in a human cage.
Don’t say what you mean when you mean to do the unspeakable. That’s an old rule. It was perfected in the 20th century from Moscow to Buenos Aires.
Opacity is the refuge of the faceless tormentor. The constitutions of totalitarian states are always unreadable, impenetrable " and very long. In a thicket of words lies plausible deniability when the time for horror’s accounting arrives. That hour always comes around.
I keep re-reading some of the sentences in the memos from the dark side. Like a labyrinth, they lead back in on themselves: “You have, however, informed us that you expect these techniques to be used in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.”
The “technique” has a “culmination” that is not necessarily an “ending”; and on round again, several hundred times.
To some degree, words failed us all in the aftermath of 9/11, a time of fear and disorientation. Journalists did not meet the challenge of holding the executive branch accountable, politically and morally, in the run-up to the Iraq war. Such failures, it is true, were not gross manipulations of the law in the service of inhumanity, but they were failures nonetheless. And they carried a human price.
So I’m wary of the clamor for retribution. Congress failed. The press failed. The judiciary failed. With almost 3,000 dead, America’s checks and balances got skewed, from the Capitol to Wall Street. Scrutiny gave way to acquiescence. Words were spun in feckless patterns.
Those checks and balances are recovering now. I don’t think this recovery would be served by prosecutions, either of C.I.A. operatives or those who gave them legal advice. Such legal action, if initiated, would split the intelligence services and the military in paralyzing ways at a time when two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are still being fought. The country would be lacerated.
The right balance between retribution and reconciliation is always hard to find in the aftermath of national trauma. Ask the Bosnians or South Africans about the trade-offs between justice and recovery. When wars are ongoing, it is wise to err on the side of caution. There’s work to do. Obama’s right: America should look ahead, not back.
A Truth Commission could address the broad collapse of accountability that opened the way for an imperial presidency and the use of cruel and inhuman treatment, while avoiding a facile search for scapegoats that would allow too many to disregard their own small measure of responsibility.
That, of course, is Obama’s favorite word: responsibility. I think it demands some acknowledgment that, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
With Obama, words have begun to have meaning again. Declarative sentences are back. I couldn’t take my eyes off that photo of Obama shaking hands with President Chávez of Venezuela; it cut through so much epic posturing. But his use of language has been more liberating even than such images.
Two sentences uttered recently by the president in Turkey are an example: “The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country " I know, because I am one of them.”
It was one of those moments when you realize just how scary Obama must be to America’s jihadist enemies. Knowing Islam across the dinner table, he has no fear of it. His predecessor, in Facebook terms, went on a spree of de-friending that made terrorist recruitment easier. Now the tables have been turned.
The U.S. has emerged from eight years of dyslexia. It has now revealed how dangerously words were manipulated and is learning again to speak a language the world can understand. America’s narrative is inclusive once more, as it must be by the country’s very nature. The power of language to reconcile is as great as its power to kill.
At his first press conference in February, Obama said: “The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.”
That’s a sentence you don’t have to read twice. The differences today are not small " they concern the rule of law and torture " but the spirit of Obama’s words still provides a useful moral compass for this moment of American self-questioning and anguish.
@mysteryman,
mysteryman wrote:
... I have always said that I find polls to be a tremendous waste of time and essentially meaningless.
Yes, you have said that, MM. But with all due respect some of us here disagree with you. Feel free to ignore the polling stuff from Nimh et al if you want to. No need to tell us, again, about your belief that polls are useless.
I strongly believe that many politicians have their fingers in the breeze (not THAT finger) gauging public sentiment.
And, MM, a personal note re the notion that folks here post polls only when the outcome is favorable to their ideology. A fair claim, I reckon, but I started to follow the daily Rasmussen Approval Index on President Obama a month or so ago with updates every couple of weeks. I am a Democrat, but I will post the latest updates without trying to spin the results.
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:mm, Polls are meaningless to you, because it tells the truth about where you conservatives stand - not only during the last presidential campaign and election, but where your esteemed Bush now stands.
It must hurt real bad. Facts do that some times.
Sorry, but I have been stating my disdain for polls all the way back to when Bill Clinton was president, so your allegation is without merit.
I even once posted an article written by the head of the Gallup Poll stating how polls can be manipulated.
Quote:It's obvious mm has not kept up with nimh's posts on polls.
I freely admit that.
Polls are meaningless to me, so why would I pay attention to a thread about polls?
When it comes to politics, the only poll I pay attention to is the election results.
Any others are meaningless.
RJB said...
Quote:I strongly believe that many politicians have their fingers in the breeze (not THAT finger) gauging public sentiment.
Thats true, and often that stops politicians from doing whats right.
They are more worried about getting re-elected or being popular, instead of doing whats best for the country.
@mysteryman,
It doesn't matter whether polls can be "manipulated." If polls continually miss the mark, they will have no credibility left for them to exist.
Can you tell us which polls that have been relatively accurate have been manipulated?
with a 
