Chuck Schumer on ‘torture:’ ‘do what you have to do’


As the Democrat-controlled Senate conducts sanctimonious hearings on enhanced interrogation methods, several Senate Democrat leaders, including Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer, announced support for delaying any prosecutions of Bush administration interrogation methods until after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence finishes investigating the issue.

This is a good time to recall what Schumer said abut torture at a June 8, 2004 Judiciary Committee hearing:

And I’d like to interject a note of balance here. There are times when we all get in high dudgeon. We ought to be reasonable about this. I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake. Take the hypothetical: If we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believed that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most senators, maybe all, would say, ‘Do what you have to do.’So it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.

I wonder if Senator Schumer  would still say that today.

Is it not peculiar that despite all the hullabaloo the Democrats now raise about the enhanced interrogation methods, there is no record of any ranking Congressional Democrat objecting to the interrogation techniques when the Congress critters were briefed about the methods?


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5 Comments Leave a comment

Actually, This Is Significant

IJB Wednesday, May 13th at 10:07PM EDT (link)

…several Senate Democrat leaders, including Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer, announced support for delaying any prosecutions of Bush administration interrogation methods until after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence finishes investigating the issue.

Delaying them is the first sign that they’ll drop them entirely.

I guess, in the end, Obama & the Dems have decided that this one particular grenade that they don’t want to pull the pin on.

 

Replay this over and over again

McKinley Wednesday, May 13th at 10:57PM EDT (link)

I’ve followed this debate somewhat closely, and I can’t recall Schumer joining Joe Biden and Jay Rockefeller in the heroics. Maybe he’s been consistent, or quiet? Maybe I’m mistaken?

I agree...

vettepilot Wednesday, May 13th at 11:00PM EDT (link)

And it would make a great commercial…

 
 

Chuck Schumer's point is a good one,

Flagstaff Thursday, May 14th at 1:37AM EDT (link)

and if investigations and prosecutions should ever happen, he has to be one of the easiest targets. The logic used by the anti-Bushies is that the lawyers advised interrogators that waterboarding is OK under certain circumstances. Schumer told them that outright torture could be OK, too.

Which is worse? And Schumer is on the record saying it.

Pluto, the Ninth Planet - Forever!

 

"Is it not peculiar"???

USNJIMRET Thursday, May 14th at 2:06AM EDT (link)

No, it’s just politics.
And the fact that whatever a politician says, it expires as an accountable event as soon as it’s uttered.
Much like a new car losing value the instant it leaves the dealer showroom.

 

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