Via Ed Morrissey, Chuck Schumer said the following in 2004:
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.
Except, in real life, if you know a nuclear bomb is planted in an American city, it's probably too late to get a terrorist to talk through coercive methods if he knows it won't be long until a city is wiped out. But sometimes, in real life, you do get a hold of a terrorist mastermind who successfully plotted the slaughter of 3,000 American civilians. When said terrorist tells you that you'll find out "soon enough" what his plans are next, what do you do? The Bush administration chose, within ethical boundaries, to make this terrorist's life very unpleasant in order to glean information, something that it achieved over a long time period. Were Chuck Schumer in this situation, it clearly seems that based on his 2004 comments he would have favored actual torture. But last month on Rachel Maddow's show, Schumer hypocritically encouraged prosecutions of Bush administration officials. Ed Morrissey has the video.