Jesse Ventura: "Give Me Cheney and a Waterboard and I'll Have Him Confess to the Sharon Tate Murders"

The Bush administration is famous for denying, or at least questioning, that waterboarding is torture. After being waterboarded himself in the SERE program, Jesse Ventura says there's no debate: waterboarding is torture.

Appearing on Larry King Live on Monday night, Ventura said just how he'd convince Dick Cheney of that fact, as well as what he thinks of Cheney's opinion of Rush Limbaugh vs. Colin Powell. You'll recall that Cheney said he would pick Limbaugh over Powell.

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.

KING: Even though you know it's not going to happen -- even though before it, you know you're not going to drown.

VENTURA: You don't know it. If it's -- if it's done wrong, you certainly could drown. You could swallow your tongue. You could do a whole bunch of stuff. If it's it done wrong or -- it's torture, Larry. It's torture. [...]

KING: A lot of things to go into, Jesse. What do you make of the Cheney/Limbaugh --

VENTURA: I don't have a lot of respect for Dick Cheney. Here's a guy who got five deferments from the Vietnam War. Clearly, he's a coward. He wouldn't go when it was his time to go. And now he is a chicken hawk. Now he is this big tough guy who wants this hardcore policy. And he's the guy that sanctioned all this torture by calling it enhanced interrogation.

KING: Do you think Rush Limbaugh's a better Republican than Colin Powell?

VENTURA: No, not at all. In fact, if you compare the two, let's look at Colin Powell, who's a war hero, who strapped it on for his country, and didn't run and hide.

KING: Twice.

VENTURA: And then you look at Dick Cheney who ran and hid. I have no respect for Dick Cheney. I have tremendous respect for General Powell.

Watch the video, from CNN Monday night, via Crooks and Liars.