Jesse Ventura wrapped up part of his book tour with an appearance on The Ed Show. Not as much fun as his body slamming of the right wingers who decided to try to take him on over whether waterboarding is torture or not, but a good interview none the less. He put the outrage over Pelosi into perspective and said that the Franken/Coleman debacle needs to come to an end and for Minnesota to finally have its second Senator after their Supreme Court rules in a couple of days.
Schultz: Governor, I've got to ask you, do you think that Nancy Pelosi has played this correctly, and has she really beaten back a real push by the conservatives to make her look terrible on all of this?
Ventura: Well to me, to me it's very much a smoke screen. Going after the Speaker doesn't get to the heart of the problem. The truth of the matter is if the Bush administration hadn't done torture this would all be irrelevant, so let's go to the, let's go to who started it all and that is the fact that, you know, Vice President Dick Cheney and his lawyers changed the name of torture and they called it enhanced interrogation, and they think that by just changing the name of something, that makes it acceptable.
Schultz: Well you have been very critical of the former Vice President. In your opinion as an American, do you think he's gone too far to stir this up, to pit one administration against another in saying the President is weak right now?
Ventura: Well yeah. Well he's going to say that. After all he's the opposition and he's defending the position they take of taking us to these two wars and everything that went on for the last eight years. I personally am offended greatly by the fact that my country now tortures people. I don't like that a bit. It's very much like an old friend of mine used to say, once the nose of the camel gets under the tent, there's no stopping the camel from being in the tent. And when you start to waterboard, where will it end?
Schultz: Okay, and from your experience as a Navy Seal, how do you think the Seals feel about all of this?
Ventura: Well, certainly I would hope they don't condone torture because it's against the law. It's already been proven that you don't get information from torturing someone because when you do torture them they will say whatever it is to stop the torture, so it's not reliable information and again, should we be stooping to the level of our opponents? I don't think so. You know, our country should be above that and waterboarding is torture because I've had it done to me at SERE school. And so I know what it's like to be waterboarded and I find it very interesting that all the people that say "oh it's just waterboarding" have never had it done to them.
Schultz: Gov. Ventura, respectfully, I've always called you that, Jesse, what do you think of this political side show for a very serious situation in Minnesota with Norm Coleman and Al Franken? As former governor, what do you think Gov. Pawlenty should do after the Minnesota State Supreme Court rules coming up in the next few days? What do you think?
Ventura: Well I think that whatever way the Supreme Court goes he should follow suit and declare the winner because Minnesota needs its second Senator. They've gone through the process and the initial election was so close that by law I believe it required a recount. Well when they did the recount, Franken apparently won and it's time to move on and it's time to get going and let him become the Senator if indeed the Supreme Court rules that way and end this matter. And besides, I find it very interesting that Norm Coleman the Republican in thirty five years he has never had a private sector job. I think it's about time as a Republican, he finds out what it's like to work in the private sector.
