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The jury is still out as to whether the majority of Americans care that much about the existence of brutality and inhumane prison conditions.
Oh, I think that has already been decided, and only a minority of Americans actually care about such things. Hell, even a month or two after the Abu Ghraib story broke most of the American public was issuing a giant collective yawn, trying to shove the story down the memory hole, and moving on to other things. There has been no mass, collective mobilization against Gitmo among the majority, and even less collective sentiment against inhumane conditions and prisoner abuse in domestic civilian prisons.
Of the majority of the population that appears to be sanguine about prison brutality, I think most are merely indifferent or willfully ignorant, but an obnoxious minority actually savor the idea, thinking that criminals deserve to be brutalized while incarcerated. There have even been hints of such sentiments on this thread, and this is Salon for Chrissakes! One can only imagine the sentiments one would find on right-wing websites.
