Don’t expect any charitable feelings around the holidays. According to a new Rasmussen national telephone survey, 58 percent of U.S. voters say they’d support using waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques to extract information from the failed Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bomber. Just 30 percent oppose using such methods on the 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly attempted to blow up a plane en route to Detroit on Christmas Day. Twelve percent are not sure.
Male and younger voters are more supportive of aggressive techniques than women and older voters, and Republicans and independents favor using them more than Democrats, Rasmussen reports.
What’s more, 71 percent of U.S. voters think that Abdulmutallab should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist, rather than being treated as a civilian. Only 22 percent say he should be treated as a civilian criminal, which is his current status.
Abdulmutallab has been chargedwith attempting to blow up an aircraft and kill U.S. civilians by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Michigan.