CHESSNOID

I am still waiting for the Larry King video I saw last night with Jesse Ventura.  I was very surprised with what Ventura had to say.  I haven’t found the video yet to embed here but will do so when I see it.  However, I did find the transcripts if you want to read what I saw.

Updated-video below:

Cheers!

CNN LARRY KING LIVE

Tiger Woods Accident in Florida; White House Party Crashers; Jesse Ventura On Conspiracy Theories And Afghanistan

KING: the former governor of Minnesota, former pro wrestler, former Navy SEAL, the host of “Conspiracy Theory,” which will debut Wednesday night on Tru-TV, about which we’ll ask in a few minutes. What do you make of the gate crashers story?

JESSE VENTURA, FMR. GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA: Well, Larry, the concern I have was not over who did it, but how they were allowed to be let in. So much for the Patriot Act and national security, huh? I mean, if you can crash the White House —

KING: Your anger is –

VENTURA: If you can crash the White House like they did, obviously the Patriot Act and national security isn’t working too well. That’s the president of the United States.

On a serious note, Larry, I think the Secret Service has something to answer to here. Ultimately, it’s their responsibility.

KING: And what are your thoughts on the Tiger Woods situation?

VENTURA: Well, for me, I hope Tiger keeps quiet. I hope that Tiger does what he’s doing right now, because it truly is nobody’s business. It was an internal thing, whatever it is, inside his house, on his property. He was never driving on a public street. I would do the identical same thing, if I were in his shoes. I would say nothing. It will blow over in a week or two. And we’ll all be fine when it’s all over. Let Tiger have his privacy.

KING: Now of a more important nature. President Obama will lay out his plans for Afghanistan, major address, West Point, tomorrow night. CNN will follow it with live coverage. We’ll be pushed back to being on at midnight, 9:00 Pacific because of that, but we’ll be here. What are your thoughts on the possibility, apparently, that he’s going to send 30,000 more troops, with an exit date?

VENTURA: Well, it still angers me, because it reminds me a great deal of Vietnam. The Russians couldn’t beat they will. The English couldn’t beat them over there. You are not going to get a military solution, in my opinion, in Afghanistan. It’s impossible.

Yet we’re just like Vietnam. Are we propping up a phony government like we did in Vietnam? Remember, the United States blocked free elections in Vietnam? Had there had been elections in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have won in a land slide.

Well, is this the same thing going on? We’re propping up an unpopular government. We’re sending our military in.

I tell you what should happen, Larry. We need an immediate Congress to pass a war tax, because you know what? We’re involved in two wars now and this country is feeling no pain. Well, I got news for you. When you’re involved in war, everyone should feel a little bit of pain. We need to pass a war tax to pay for this war.

And I’ll tell you something else. It’s time to bring back the draft. These guys are on their fifth or sixth tours over there. I used to be advocate for a professional military. I’m not anymore. It’s too easy for these people to take our young men and women to war and not account for it.

And let’s pass one more law, Larry. The next time the government votes to go to war, I think every congressman and senator should be required to pr predesignate someone in their family begins immediate military service. I’m tired for these people voting to go to war and then they have no dog in the fight.

KING: Governor, would you leave — if it was your decision, what would you do?

VENTURA: I would pull out of Afghanistan. I would pull out of Iraq. And I would bring our boys home. It’s our job to protect their safety and not be sending them off to wars. What are we accomplishing there? I look at it from a personal viewpoint, Larry. I don’t understand how these two wars have helped Jesse Ventura or the United States of America one bit, other than to drain our economy.

KING: We’ll take a break. When we come back, we’ll talk about Jesse’s new show “Conspiracy Theory.” Then he’ll be joined by Ben Stein and Arianna Huffington to talk more about Afghanistan. More with Jesse after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Jesse Ventura’s new show, the title of which is “Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura,” debuts Wednesday night on Tru-TV. Here’s a sample.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VENTURA: This is the infamous Hangar 17. This is a place where we’ve contacted on multiple, multiple occasions to go inside and see what they have inside this building, because there are remnants from September 11th in there. Get up here.

This is what they don’t want me to see. We’ve tried to get in this building. We can’t get in it now. The door’s locked. You can see girders obviously from the 9/11 site. Why won’t they give us access to this building? What is the reason for it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Wow. Are you going to do every week? How long is the show on, weekly?

VENTURA: Yes, we’re weekly, one hour a night. For seven weeks, we will cover seven different modern conspiracies that go back within the last decade. We won’t be covering John F. Kennedy or Dr. Martin Luther King or any of the stuff back then. We kept it to the ten-year last decade. Believe me, the problem, Larry, wasn’t finding conspiracies; it was choosing which ones we wanted to cover.

KING: What is the 9/11 conspiracy?

VENTURA: Well, the 9/11 conspiracy is simply that the government hasn’t been truthful with us. I mean, Larry, a couple weeks ago, the head of the 9/11 Commission legal — I believe he’s former Attorney General Farmer from New Jersey — came out publicly and stated unequivocally that at some point the government decided that American citizens would not hear the truth about 9/11. I find that very disturbing.

KING: Which is?

VENTURA: I don’t know.

KING: What truth? VENTURA: We can’t find it, naturally, because I don’t have subpoena power. We don’t have the ability to put people under oath and threaten them with prosecution.

KING: What would they be hiding in that bulling?

VENTURA: I don’t know.

KING: What are you thinking? In your wildest imagination, what do you think?

VENTURA: Well, in my wildest imagination, I find it very difficult that those buildings could fall at the speed of gravity, without being assisted in some way. And I used to do demolition for a living. And how could those buildings fall as fast as I used to free fall out of an airplane? If you took a billiard ball and dropped it the height of the Twin Towers, and you just merely stopped it and started it every floor in free fall, it would take over a minute and a half to fall to the ground. The buildings were down in 10 seconds.

KING: So you think it might have been something inside?

VENTURA: I think most definitely our government has not been honest with us. Here’s the big point I make on 9/11: why is it off limits to talk about it? Why is it off limits to question and ask questions? You know, when I went through Navy SEAL training, I was taught in demolition, Larry, that there is no dumb question. If you don’t understand it, it’s not dumb. That’s how I’ve lived my life. I have a lot of questions that the government refuses to answer.

KING: Is the 9/11 story the first show this Wednesday?

VENTURA: No, it’s not. The first show will be HARP. It’s based upon a book that a scientist wrote. It says “angels don’t play this harp.” It’s about an antenna grouping that we have up in Alaska that’s supposedly an unclassified research center. If it’s unclassified, why wouldn’t they let me in?

KING: That’s going to be something. Jesse Ventura’s new show, “Conspiracy Theory.”

VENTURA: Clearly they’re not being honest, Larry. If it was unclassified, I could get in.

KING: I get you.

VENTURA: OK.

KING: The new show debuts Wednesday night on Tru-TV. Arianna Huffington and Ben Stein will join the party. And they were invited, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWS BREAK) KING: Jesse Ventura remains us with. Now joining us from Palm Springs, California, Ben Stein, the economist, former presidential speech writer, columnist for “Fortune Magazine.” And in Washington, our old friend Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and editor in chief of HuffingtonPost.com. And don’t forget Jesse Ventura’s new show, “Conspiracy Theory,” debuts Wednesday night on Tru-TV.

Ben, what do you think of the governors thoughts about Afghanistan?

BEN STEIN, ECONOMIST: Well, I’m very upset about Afghanistan. First of all, it’s a quandary. Great powers don’t break their words. We promised the people of Afghanistan we would stay there.

But I was at Walter Reed Medical Center five days ago, six days ago. I met a man — an American soldier shot five times by an Afghan soldier in our Afghan army, our friends, the Afghan army. This guy had been trained for five years by the Americans. Then he came in while these American soldiers were having dinner and shot five of them. So if that’s our situation, it’s a very bleak situation.

On the other hand, what do we do? Do we turn back to the Taliban and have it become a haven for terrorists and for al Qaeda? I don’t know what to do at this point. But an exit date scares me. The Taliban will laugh at the exit date. They’ll just wait patiently until the exit date and then take over.

KING: Arianna, what do you think?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, CO-FOUNDER, HUFFINGTONPOST.COM: Well, Ben really points out the main problem here, which is that we’re inserting ourselves in the middle of a civil war. The president has called this a war of necessity, but it’s not. It’s a war of choice. It’s not clear what America’s national security interests are.

And as a result, the public is losing trust in this war. And there’s inevitably going to be some kind of exit strategy, which, again, as Ben said, makes people in Afghanistan feel they can’t trust us there to stay there indefinitely, because we’re not going to stay there indefinitely. And the Taliban is going to stay there indefinitely. So without clarifying our national security interests, escalating in Afghanistan is a really tragic decision.

KING: Governor, it would seem we’re between a rock and a hard place.

VENTURA: Well, let’s look at it that way. Maybe that’s why we’re there. We have our troops in Iraq and we have our troops in Afghanistan now. Is an invasion of Iran next? Because that’s the country in between both of them.

So maybe that’s the big picture, and they’re not letting us in on it. You know, their plan might be, you know, they’re going to do something to Iran, so you get your milton both sides. You know, I haven’t figured out yet how the country profits from either one of these wars. And why aren’t we paying for it? Let’s have, like I said, a war tax so that everybody has to fork out some money to pay for this.

KING: Ben, is that a good point? Shouldn’t we all sacrifice?

STEIN: Well, I think we should all sacrifice. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been saying for five or six years — when I used to write a column for the “Times,” I was saying constantly we should have a tax and use it to pay for the military to get better pay and better treatment.

But an increase in taxes in the middle of a severe recession is highly questionable at best.

VENTURA: Really? So is a war, Ben. So is a war that’s draining our economy.

STEIN: I know.

VENTURA: Isn’t that a little worse than increasing —

STEIN: Governor, we’re in the war and we’re in the recession. Why make the recession worse?

(CROSS TALK)

VENTURA: And who took us to war? The chicken hawks. The guys who —

STEIN: That doesn’t matter.

VENTURA: Yes, it matters to me.

STEIN: It doesn’t matter at this point, governor. It doesn’t matter at this point. Why would you want to push us deeper into the recession? Let’s say it was a bad idea to go into these wars. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Why would you punish the ordinary income tax payer?

KING: Let Arianna have a word in here. Arianna?

HUFFINGTON: Ben, the question here is that when it comes to health care, we are all very concerned about not having a health care bill that is not going to be deficit neutral. Why don’t we have the same concerns about escalating in Afghanistan? That’s really the question. If we want health care deficit neutral, why isn’t the war deficit neutral as well?

KING: Let me get — I got to get a break, guys. We’ll pick up. Let me get a break, and we’ll pick up with this very boring interlude. Don’t go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: I wish we had more time. All right, Ben, you were going to say something before I cut in.

STEIN: I was going to say we always pay for wars by running deficits. And generally speaking, we’re paying for everything by running deficits. We’ve had two extremely irresponsible presidents in terms of deficits in the last nine years. And Arianna is right, we should try to make everything budget neutral, but maybe not during a very bad recession.

HUFFINGTON: Well, I agree with Ben. Right now, the greatest priority is jobs and what’s happening to people’s lives all across America. That should be the highest priority for the White House, not fighting a war which is not in a clear defined way in our national security interests.

KING: If something is wrong, Jesse, why continue a wrong?

VENTURA: Exactly. I mean it’s like our ego is in the way here. You know, we dare — don’t dare leave because then people will say we cut and ran, or whatever it might be. But, you know, two wrongs don’t make a right. And that’s where both of these wars are, two wrongs. And now we think we’re making them right? It’s not going to happen. You know? There’s no end in these wars.

KING: If you had a son there, Ben, and you felt it was wrong, Ben, wouldn’t you feel your son died in vain?

STEIN: I would not want my son fighting in Iraq for sure. I think Afghanistan is a whole different story. I would love for my son to be in the military. I’m constantly urging him to join the military, as a matter of fact, and pleading and begging with him to join the military. He has an incredibly beautiful wife, so I don’t think he’ll ever leave her. But — he doesn’t want to leave his incredibly beautiful wife. He’s a young, strong, healthy guy.

KING: Why do you want him to join?

STEIN: Because I think he owes it to his country. I think he owes it to himself to shape up and get himself some responsibility.

VENTURA: Ben, when did you serve? Ben, did you serve?

STEIN: I was in the Navy, was expelled — you asked me that already. I in the Naval ROTC and was kicked out for having asthma. But I did volunteer and they kicked me out. So there you are.

VENTURA: OK.

STEIN: I was in it for a couple months, marching around and learning — I never was able to serve.

KING: Jesse –

STEIN: Well, Jesse is a brave, heroic guy.

HUFFINGTON: You know what’s going to be interesting, Larry? Tomorrow night, the president is going to give a speech in which he’s going to try and square the circle. He’s going to give General McChrystal more or less what he wanted in terms of troops. And he’s going to try to give everybody else who is opposed to this escalation a lot of words. But that’s not going to work because the public is losing confidence in this attempt to try and be all things to our people and split the difference.

KING: Sorry, folks, we’re out of time. I’m really sorry. Thank you all very much. Todd Sperry (ph), our man in Washington, said that I look like Pepto Bismol tonight. I know someone who hates Pepto Bismol so that hits a nice tone for me.