Schumer on Schumer

Another in a line of "Who said what, when" posts...we give you everybody's favorite Senator from New York (no, the other one). Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Chuckie took a hit from Chris Wallace when asked about a quote or two from the run-up to war in Iraq.

[Wallace]:I want to play a clip from your statement back in October of 2002 when you voted to authorize the use of force. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHUMER: It is Hussein's vigorous pursuit of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and his present and future potential support for terrorist acts and organizations that make him a danger to the people of the united states.

C. WALLACE: Senator, you read the intelligence and you came to the same conclusion the president did.

SCHUMER: Yes. The bottom line is I wasn't as sure of it as the president was, but I believe in a post-9/11 world, Chris, that the president does need latitude to keep our national security strong. And you know, that is true.

But we also have to make sure, once you give the president that latitude, that you keep him accountable, and that's what we tried to do in the Senate the other day. Just because you give the president latitude, that's not at all a blank check.

And it seems that subsequent to that time, the president made many, many, many mistakes in the use of intelligence, and all we got from the committee — and there was a lot of talk that the White House was directing Pat Roberts (search) to do so. He's the chairman of the Intelligence Committee — was stonewalling on the use of intelligence.

And I think it's really important not to point fingers of blame, not to gain any political advantage, but so we don't make the same mistakes again. After all, we have an Iran. We have a North Korea. We have other problems that are going to come down the road for this president or future presidents. And we ought to see where things went wrong and correct them.

Now, if you hear the clip aside from just reading it, Chuck comes across as forceful and sincere. Rather than admit that he believed what the intelligence was saying, he throws up some lame answer that is supposed to differentiate his "support" of the conclusions drawn from the President's case relying on the same information: The bottom line is I wasn't as sure of it as the president was...

Like I said the other day: As you try, I will laugh out loud while you explain to your rabid anti-everything base that you weren't duped and can still be trusted with power in spite of your incompetence; or weren't abdicating your constitutional authority for oversight by rubber-stamping the President's policy; or lastly how you didn't actually agree with what the pre-war intelligence seemed to be saying.