Poll: Majority of Americans Opposed to Being Killed by Drone
MINNEAPOLIS — In a possible setback for
the Administration’s controversial drone policy, a new poll conducted by the
University of Minnesota shows that a broad majority of Americans are opposed to
being killed by a drone strike on U.S. soil.
The poll, which
has a margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points, showed that
ninety-seven per cent of those surveyed “strongly agreed” with the statement,
“I personally do not want to be killed by a drone,” with three per cent
responding, “Don’t know/No opinion.”
“There’s no other way to interpret these
numbers,” said the University of Minnesota’s Davis Logsdon, who oversaw the
survey. “The idea of being killed by a drone is not playing well out there.”
And while the poll numbers may not augur
well for the Administration’s expanding use of drones, the response was even
more negative in a focus group of likely drone victims.
One member of that group, a
forty-three-year-old male from St. Paul, complained that “it doesn’t even seem
like the government is trying to come up with alternatives to killing us with
drones.”
“It seems like they could figure out some
kind of system where instead of just being killed by a drone, people could maybe
present evidence to see if they’re guilty or not,” he said.
At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney
tried to make the best of the poll results, telling reporters, “Look, people
are afraid of getting killed by a drone. We get that. But there is still broad
public support for drones killing somebody else.”
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