Coke and Pepsi – that’s the 2004 election in the mind of Jesse Ventura.

The former governor and Navy Seal said the decision on who to vote for this November is between two similar products.

“One is sweeter than the other, depending on your taste buds,” Ventura said Wednesday night at Foellinger Auditorium. “Two hand-picked candidates by two elitist parties.”

Ventura used the lecture to comment on the war in Iraq, politics in the United States, the need for a third-party candidate and other issues concerning the University audience.

He said the political system in America is constructed by Democrats and Republicans to make a third party difficult to organize, despite what he perceived as the public’s desire for a third candidate.

“Twenty percent of the people are Democrat, and 20 percent are Republican, but the majority don’t like either,” Ventura said.

He used voter turnout as evidence of the public’s disdain for the system as it stands now.

“Look at America. Less than half vote. Why? Because if you are like me, you have nobody to vote for,” he said.

He said the media and the two major parties told Minnesotans that a vote for him would be throwing away their vote. However, Ventura said he and the voters proved the claims wrong when he won the election for governor after spending only $300,000 on his campaign, as opposed to the $12 million spent by his opponents.

He encouraged young people to vote in order to get politicians to pay attention to them, but he said he does not plan to vote at all this election.

Ventura labeled himself as “fiscally conservative, but socially liberal,” which he said is the backbone for his independent stance.

In addition, he spoke out against the war in Iraq.

“I’m one of the few veterans who opposed the Iraq war from day one,” Ventura said. “If it were up to me, I would have chased Osama bin Laden to the ends of the Earth and put him six feet under.”

Ventura then said invading Iraq under the guise of weapons of mass destruction would be like invading Korea after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

“We (the United States) love dictators as long as they answer to us,” he said. “It’s when they don’t answer to us that we have problems.”

Sean Patrick, a senior in LAS who attended the lecture, said he agreed with Ventura’s stance against gun control of any type. He also said he respected Ventura because “he seems like a regular guy.”

“He kind of represented everybody, and I think that’s what the people needed,” Patrick said.

However, Tom Amenta, freshman in LAS, said he didn’t agree with everything Ventura had to say but found the lecture engaging.

“I like that he didn’t cut around the issues and wasn’t afraid of a little controversy,” Amenta said.