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Here’s something weird.  In a recent poll, the New York Times asked people if we should shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, but they used slightly different wording for half the sample.  Here’s the response:

People were actually more in favor of shutting down Guantanamo when told it was holding “suspected terrorists.”  Granted, it was only a six point difference and might just be a statistical artifact, but it sure is the opposite of what you’d suspect.  Question: is this just some kind of strange outlier, or does it suggest that the events of the past eight years have actually made people more jaded about the supposed danger of “suspected terrorists” than they are about mere “detainees”?

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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