Wednesday, May 13, 2009

An offer that shouldn't be refused

Jesse Ventura, the former Minnesota governor and Navy SEAL, came up with a great idea on CNN's Larry King Live earlier this week:

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 water boarded. 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 water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

Video of the exchange can be found below:



Ventura's last point was important. He reminds us that waterboarding might be effective at getting the detainee to say whatever you want him or her to say (confessing to the Sharon Tate murders, for instance). But of course, this is much different than getting the detainee to reveal helpful information.

h/t Think Progress

2 comments:

Jack T. said...

Cheney won't do it and never would - which is one of the many reasons his opinion on the matter should be taken with a grain of salt. Besides, who wants to see a sick old man get waterboarded? Sean Hannity, who agreed to it on air, a deal sweetened by Keith Olbermann's pledge of $1000 to a charity of Hannity's choosing for every second Hannity survives, is the man I want to see get water boarded.

blackink said...

Jack, I'm right there with you. I meant to mention that Hannity was punking out, too.

Since he thinks it's roughly akin to getting dunked in a tank of water at a state fair, I don't understand why he's backing down?