Jesse Ventura on Bush II, torture, legalization of drugs, surfing, and more

If you enjoy hearing straight-up language delivered by someone who's certainly been there (and there, and there, too), and you happened to miss Larry King's May 11th show, it is my pleasure to post for you herein the unique and thought-provoking words of Jesse Ventura, Minnesota's former governor (party: Independent), as well as a retired Navy SEAL, professional wrestler, author, actor, passionate surfer, and--as of this interview's airing--the first American politician I've heard pitch President Obama for the position of Ambassador to Cuba at some undetermined point in the future.

Well.

As you're aware, I'm a Florida-residing Brit, and I don't claim to know a great deal about Minnesota politics; based on this appearance, however, I can certainly say I'm impressed with Ventura's take on a number of hot-button topics. For example, Ventura, who was subjected to waterboarding during SERE training, states unequivocally that the "technique" IS, without question, torture. Point final.

In fact, Ventura says that if you were to give him Dick Cheney and a waterboard, in one hour he'd have Cheney confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.

Just watch the interview--parts one and two (the whole effort is not that long)--and you'll see what I mean. And perhaps, like me, you'll be wishing (again) that we could have an honest-to-goodness, full-throttle-powerful third party in this country. Because with respect to the very serious subject of war crimes, the cowardice, lies, diversionary tactics, and flat-out bullshit we've seen both Republicans AND Democrats serve up to the public these past several weeks--and that they've expected us to swallow whole so they can move on, country be damned, Constitution be damned--have turned my stomach and chilled my blood. Okay--watch:

Comments

[oddjob]

He was a sufficiently appealing campaigner that he was elected governor of Minnesota, but my recollection is that once he was in office things didn't go all that well. He's actually pretty thin-skinned, IIRC, and I have yet to learn of a thin-skinned politician who was an effective one.

That's not to say a full-throated 3rd party would be a bad idea!

[oddjob]

(Or, was an effective executive, to be more accurate.)

[Corvus9]

I keep expecting him to spit out a long stream of chewing tobacco spit, drawl "Payback Time!", and crank up his mini-gun.

God-damn, I love Predator.

[minstrel hussain boy]

my only objection to what jesse said is that he would need an hour to get his confession.

that's too much "fun" time to be effective. i would say to hell with the waterboard and go straight for the hot irons.

fire. branding. even if he walks there are those embarassing burn scars.

plus, fifteen minutes max. cut, stanch the bleeding with a brand. rinse, repeat.

a punk like cheney couldn't hang with the training that jesse and i did, much less a real fight.

[kathy a.]

it is so easy to remember ventura in a cartoonish way. i'd forgotten what was so appealing about him, that he is smart, has a lot of experiences, and there is no bullshit there. well, maybe a little about surfing, but that's personal and forgivable.

i think he explained why waterboarding is torture very elegantly and plainly. and did you notice -- he didn't bite on the questions about that freak limbaugh, whose only interest is in the money he earns by squawking, but went straight to the top by repeatedly invoking cheney, the architect of US torture, and a poorly-weapons-trained chicken-hawk to boot.

[Glenn Fayard]

Too bad Ventura also thinks 9/11 was an inside job. Just sayin'.

[kathy a.]

does he? still? it should be obvious, i haven't followed the guy. and hell no, i'm not behind that silly thought he should be on the supreme court, or anything close.

but i see nothing much to fault in his thoughts about waterboarding, or cheney.

[litbrit]

kathy: yes. As to the 9/11 belief, I wasn't aware of him being a "truther", but if he's anything like a lot of independents I know who essentially distrust the current system--two parties that in too many ways are just flip sides of the same coin; both of which are heavily supported by Big _____ (Oil, Pharma, Ag, Insurance, fill-in-the-blank) via our unique system of lobbying and campaign contributions; both of which routinely reject, or circumvent, any meaningful change over to a publicly-financed election system and a ban on hard and soft money donations? Well, I'd say Ventura's being open to all explanations as to how, exactly, the perfect storm of circumstances that convened to bring us 9/11 came about and did just that is hardly unusual. You can all flame me now. ;-)

[litbrit]

Okay, I Googled around a bit and what I came across was this: Ventura, while he was a SEAL, was trained in the use of explosives (particularly underwater), and accordingly has questioned the official (and generally accepted) melting-steel-core explanations for the towers' collapse, citing the powdered nature of the rubble and lack of "pancaking" as possible evidence that systematic explosives were employed. The thing is, anyone and everyone who calls the official explanation into question is immediately branded as a nutbar, a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist who won't let go while the rest of the world moves on.

As you'd expect, sites like Free Republic have torn Ventura apart for going on the air with his thoughts and doubts re: 9/11. That he is often quoted by sites normally associated with elaborate conspiracy theories would not appear to help; a shame, since he's a terribly smart man and as someone served his country in the very capacity that afforded him more knowledge about demolitions and explosives than, say, the average guy at the mall, he deserves to be a prominent part of the conversation about what happened and how to do everything in our power to prevent it from happening again.

Sadly, so many people have stopped talking about it (9/11) altogether, thus there is really is no conversation to speak of any more. Those who dare to even mention that awful day are, in my experience anyway, hurriedly told to shut the fuck up; if their thoughts about what led to the disaster should deviate from the official explanation, they'll be flamed, called crazy, and run out of town on a rail.

I think that eventually, when enough time has passed and enough data and documentation has been declassified or otherwise found its way into the public realm, we'll all know with certainty. Until then, our choices are limited to 1) accept every bit of the official explanation without question, nothing to see here, move on; 2) question everything and attempt to construct one's own theories--or blindly subscribe to the wild ones other people have constructed--which will range from somewhat to extremely conspiratorial, implausible, and crazy; OR--and this is where I'd place myself-- 3) accept the current official explanation while maintaining an open mind that if and when further evidence becomes available, there's a possibility that another explanation may arise and supplant the official one.

[Sir Charles]

I think the pancaking of the building has been explained rather credibly in a number of places. A good account is in the book "102 Minutes," which explains rather well how changes in the NYC building code led directly to the disaster at WTC. A building with a masonry core around its stairwells would have withstood the fire for far longer than steel work sprayed with an ineffectual fire retardant.

There's your conspiracy, such as it is -- the quest to use cheaper materials.

[kathy a.]

the buildings collapsed. after planes rode into them. and yes, the people who made the planes fly into the buildings are enemies, although i doubt they thought they'd be so successful. and yeah, the buildings were not what they should have been.

but can we get back to waterboarding and torture? the tactic of the last 8 years has been to deflect anything and everything by yelling "9/11!!!" why do we do that to ourselves?

cheney is a piece of work, and i hope he eventually gets prosecuted for his crimes. torture is torture; war crimes do not have statutes of limitations. he can be put on ice for a while.

this administration is in triage. i don't blame them for calling torture torture, and then bumping prosecution back while they get some other stuff into better shape.

[Sir Charles]

Can't someone lure Cheney into taking an overseas trip?

Then I hope to be able to break out my "Hague, Bitches!" T-Shirt.

[litbrit]

Sir C, yes, but what Ventura and others have asserted--with how much scientific background, who knows--but anyway, what they say is that the rubble does *not* resemble a typical pancaking event, but rather, is excessively pulverized, as you'd see with the use of explosives. Just saying what they're saying.

And yes, to get back to kathy's point: I was pleased to see Ventura *not* bite at Larry King's Limbaugh mention and go straight to the source: Cheney. It's important to keep the focus on him, the architect of torture, indeed.

I think this whole tactic of trying to lay it on Pelosi is backfiring, though. The comments in a NYT article ran heavily in favor of Pelosi being only partly-informed, if at all, as well as legally-bound to not disclose any of it publicly, and it's well-understood that she was certainly not one of the people who ordered the torture and signed off on it.

Whereas Bush and Cheney remain at the epicenter, since they ordered it.

Also, as KO pointed out last night, the legal language in the Bybee and Yoo writings only gave possible okays to the waterboarding (for example) *if and only if* a) there was a real, provable threat that another attack was imminent b) they knew the subject had information pertaining to the attack and c) despite trying everything else, nothing in the accepted methods worked to get that information out--in other words, a ticking time bomb scenario where every moment counted. YET, as we know from what has been released about the results of those interrogations, they took over a month to apply the torture method, hundreds of times, and the thrust was getting the subjects to give them information linking Saddam Hussein and Iraq to Al Qaida. No ticking time bomb, in other words.

So, to sum up: Cheney's torture gang didn't even follow the slimy legal guidelines laid out for them by Bush's fascist law advisers.

[oddjob]

we'll all know with certainty

I disagree. We still don't know with certainty who shot JFK (& I'm not saying I find one assassin impossible, only that we don't know with certainty) or Martin Luther King, Jr.

We aren't ever going to know with certainty, either.

[oddjob]

why do we do that to ourselves?

The MSM does it by being so goddamn deferential and by refusing to speak truth to power.

[litbrit]

Good point, oddjob. I stand corrected: we won't ever know with complete certainty. But we will have a much clearer idea of what happened before and after--hell, we *already* have a much clearer picture of what happened in Bushworld before and during the Iraq invasion than we did six months ago. And it's going to get clearer and clearer, I believe.

And yes--a thousand times, yes--our corporate-owned MSM only speaks truth to power when it's in their overwhelming financial interest to do so, i.e. bringing voices like KO and Rachel to the masses. If it didn't make money, they wouldn't be doing it.

[oddjob]

Giving credit where credit's due, this is what the MSM doesn't do enough of.

(Hat tip, Sully.)

[kathy a.]

about "excessively pulverized" -- has there ever been a pancaking event in the history of time that involved something approaching the height of the WTC towers? we're not talking a few stories, here, so how is a comparison to something similar even possible? wouldn't gravity alone make the weight of the top crush whatever it fell into, stage after stage after stage? and on top of that, we know there *were* explosives: those airliners loaded with fuel blew up, and began a firestorm in enclosed spaces. we know that happened, because we all saw it a thousand times.

i'm going to have to read the memos from the lawyers, even though it makes me sick even to read the reports about them. if the lawyers advised their clients to break the law, they should be disbarred at the least. but if they advised accurately about the boundaries of the law, and advised not to break it, that is a different kettle of fish. in either case, it doesn't relieve cheney of seeking any kind of legal opinions to expand the power of the presidency to his own ends.

[litbrit]

I read the Yoo memo earlier today--all 80-something awful, horribly-written pages of it.

There are some really huge leaps that he made, for example, stating that the definition of "dangerous weapon" was one which could cause "bodily injury", but insofar as everything from a broom handle to a speeding car could, conceivably, inflict bodily injury, as long as the torture victim was not permanently and provably injured in such a way as a jury would find him to have suffered "bodily injuries", then the interrogation methods used would not be interpreted as having used "dangerous weapons". All clear now?

Cicero wept.

[litbrit]

has there ever been a pancaking event in the history of time that involved something approaching the height of the WTC towers?

Good point, kathy.

(As I said, I hope for an eventual disclosure of far more information, but I'm not holding my breath.)

[low-tech cyclist]

Getting back to a third party, every time I point out that we need one for exactly this reason - to not perpetually wind up with the likes of Rahm Emmanuel or Harry Reid supposedly speaking for us, but having a voice of our own on the national stage - I get a shitload of flak. Don't ask me why.

The blueprint for a third part 9f the left is simple: you take advantage of the reality that most House races are extremely noncompetitive. So such a party would run candidates, with the goal of winning, where the GOP candidate was lucky to get 30% of the vote. And would also run candidates in the districts where the Dem didn't have a prayer of winning, but that by showing the flag, a genuinely liberal candidate might start changing people's thinking. Finally, this party would avoid the ~150 House races where a leftward 3rd-party candidate might give a GOPer a real chance at winning a Dem district, or screw a Dem's otherwise viable chances of ousting a Republican.

[litbrit]

ltc, interesting thoughts. And maybe the key to a more appealing-to-all third party is to avoid the dread, mis-interpreted L-word (liberal) and instead play up the notions of independence, humaneness, caring for others while still celebrating self-actualization, family-centeredness, creativity-encouragement, intelligence-supportiveness, education-education-education, understanding of and respect for history--all those sorts of things we all hold dear. Hey, I am proudly liberal and have no problem with the word, but as we're well aware, the right have turned it into a scary word that says, to many in the center and right, a lot of things that do not, in actuality, apply to the liberals I know.