"VENTURA: I will criticize President Obama on this level; it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law.

KING: You were a Navy SEAL.

VENTURA: That's right. I was water boarded, so I know -- at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence -- every one of us was waterboarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA: It's drowning....

"VENTURA: I will criticize President Obama on this level; it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law.

KING: You were a Navy SEAL.

VENTURA: That's right. I was water boarded, so I know -- at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence -- every one of us was waterboarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA: It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."
-former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura on CNN with Larry King, May 11, 2009

some people will never get that when when you perform this technique on knowing participants who are assured that it is survival training, it's different than when you do it as a way to elicit information from an enemy. some people will never get that our SERE training did not involve repeated (more than 80) incidences of such technique. Some people want to equate training techniques with what we did to our enemies. One is told they will be prepared to withstand this, the other is told they will die if they don't cooperate. But when countless others say it amounts to mock execution which is illegal under international law, when others like McCain and Ali Soufan, and other CIA and militar...

some people will never get that when when you perform this technique on knowing participants who are assured that it is survival training, it's different than when you do it as a way to elicit information from an enemy. some people will never get that our SERE training did not involve repeated (more than 80) incidences of such technique. Some people want to equate training techniques with what we did to our enemies. One is told they will be prepared to withstand this, the other is told they will die if they don't cooperate. But when countless others say it amounts to mock execution which is illegal under international law, when others like McCain and Ali Soufan, and other CIA and military officers say there are more successful ways to elicit information and water boarding is torture, same people close their eyes and dig in. For those of you who believe the ends justify the means, and dig in to say we got good information which saved lives (disputed), at least admit that the extreme duress which elicited this information is torture, but we do it for America. Jeez. If it wasn't torture, why did they give in? At least billpar admits its a necessary EVIL.