Distorting Public Opinion on Torture Investigations

Last Friday, CNN hosted a panel debate on torture and investigations
with two conservatives and two liberals (Daily Kos' David Waldman and
Center for American Progress' Erica Williams). Waldman did a genuinely
masterful job of arguing the case against torture and for
investigations -- you can watch the five-minute segment here
-- but, bizarrely, the representative for CAP joined in with the two
conservatives against Waldman to insist that there be no
investigations. This is what she said:

The
American people right now are actually not interested in this sideshow
and this discussion. The American people are interested in looking
forward -- nobody is concerned anymore with what the Bush
administration was doing and did. We decided it was torture.
Conservatives may or may not disagree. None of that matters at this
point and time.

I wonder how Williams reconciles her claims about what "the American people" are and are not interested in with this:

That
poll was from February, and while some subsequent polls have produced
different results, all polls -- even the most recent ones with the most anti-investigation findings -- find that roughly 40% of Americans
believe there must be some form of investigations in Bush crimes.
That's a lot of people to be dismissing away as "nobody." And
Democrats in particular -- the group ostensibly represented by CAP and
which chose Barack Obama as their nominee -- overwhelmingly favor either criminal prosecutions or investigations.
Williams' claim that "nobody is concerned anymore with what the Bush
administration was doing and did" is patently false and, more to the
point, is a fringe position among Democrats and progressives. Is that
really the position CAP wants to be articulating on CNN?

What makes her claims even more strange is that it contradicts what CAP itself seems to be doing. Here is an article that the main website for American Progress, the entity Williams represents, is currently promoting:

That's an odd article to be running given that, according to Williams, it's a topic about which "nobody is concerned." And CAP's blog, ThinkProgress, has some of the best and most comprehensive coverage around of the debates over torture and investigations.

This
happens all the time in our political debates. Rather than argue the
substance of the issue, there is this virtually compulsive need to
assert -- with no evidence -- that "the American people" believes a
certain way and that anyone who believes otherwise is fringe and
isolated. There's just no denying the fact that, as evidence of the
depth of our national crimes continues to emerge, there is increased attention across the political spectrum being paid to these issues. In today's New York Times alone, Frank Rich lays out the case for why investigations are critically necessary, and Maureen Dowd -- in an uncharacteristically cogent and substantive column -- ends with this:

I
used to agree with President Obama, that it was better to keep moving
and focus on our myriad problems than wallow in the darkness of the
past. But now I want a full accounting. I want to know every awful act
committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism. Even if it only
makes one ambitious congresswoman pay more attention in some future
briefing about some future secret technique that is "uniquely" designed
to protect us, it will be worth it.

If CAP wants
to have its representatives arguing against torture investigations,
that's its prerogative, but it really shouldn't be making claims about
what the "American people" and especially Democrats believe when those
claims are so clearly false.

UPDATE: It's amazing how desperate
some Beltway Democrats -- and the Democratic Party establishment -- are
to lead the way now in insisting that there be no investigations of any
kind into the chronic crimes of the Bush administration. Watch
DNC Chairman Tim Kaine squirm endlessly on Meet the Press this morning as he advocates a position that, at least according to polls, only a small portion of Democrats share: let's
just forget about all that lawbreaking and torture stuff; who cares if
our highest government officials committed serious crimes? Is
that the official position of the DNC? Although it's obviously because
he perceive it as a cynical tool to attack Nancy Pelosi, the RNC's
Michael Steele seems far more interested in disclosure and
investigations than Kaine does:

As usual, what must never be mentioned are the torture victims themselves, including the 100 or so that were actually killed while in U.S. custody.
It can't be overstated how self-centered, petty and amoral it is for
the Tim Kaines and Erica Williamses of the world to insist that their
little partisan desires justify telling the victims of our torture
regime that it's time for them to pipe down and accept that there will
be no accountability for what happened to them because we have
Important Things to do and can't and don't want to be bothered by
"looking back." What kind of a country commits brutal crimes and then
insists that they can't be burdened with disclosure and accountability
because they're too busy or because it's too burdensome?