Axis of Waterboarding

The BBC asked 27,000 respondents in 25 countries to briefly evaluate these two statements:

Most countries have agreed to rules prohibiting torturing prisoners. Which position is closer to yours?

Terrorists pose such an extreme threat that governments should now be allowed to use some degree of torture if it may gain information that saves innocent lives

Clear rules against torture should be maintained because any use of torture is immoral and will weaken international human rights

And here are the results:

Allow me to be the first in the blogosphere to note that the BBC, in publishing these results so close to the American mid-term elections, is clearly attempting to guide the outsome of our democratic process. More importantly, the methodological failures of this survey are glaring. Indeed, my vast knowledge of statistical methods tells me these figures could be dissected by a kindergartener (e.g., if so many Americans support torture, why aren’t our hospitals filled with injured people? Where are all the fresh graves? Why hasn’t the media seen and reported on all this torture? Why have the authors of this survey not responded to my mighty stream of non sequiturs?)