It's Sunday

One American sniper called Iraqi natives “savages,” compared them to American welfare recipients, and bragged about looting their homes after killing them. Another American sniper became so disgusted by what he had done that he started the first-ever antiwar blog, and is actively encouraging his fellow soldiers to use their First Amendment rights to speak out against what he calls an “illegal occupation” in Iraq. Guess which one had a blockbuster movie made about him, and which one got ignored?

  RSN

I guess Oliver Stone was busy.

While Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who killed over 160 people during his time in Iraq, relished in pulling the trigger and wrote “I only wish I had killed more” in his memoir, [Kosovo and Iraqi veteran and third generation soldier Garett] Reppenhagen became increasingly more remorseful after each kill. “Every time I pulled the trigger, I had to really convince myself that I was saving a buddy of mine. And it got increasingly difficult,” Reppenhagen told an audience at Colorado College in May of 2011.

[...]

“It was the conduct of the war that really started turning me, and the fraudulent causes that sent me there that really put me over the edge,” Reppenhagen said. “There were no ties to 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction.” [...] Reppenhagen became the first active duty member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).

[...]

“There are ways to resist this war within army regulations. You still obtain your rights as a citizen,” Reppenhagen said at a lecture in March of 2008. “You’re able to use those rights, and you should, since you’re the one sacrificing to protect those rights.”

[...]

“There’s a lot of pride in joining our army, our corps,” he continued. “We can fight for a cause that will change America and the world for the better and stop these occupations.”

Not very American, is he? American Sniper Chris Kyle, now THERE’s a REAL American.

According to Slate, Chris Kyle doesn’t refer to [ex-SEAL Jesse] Ventura by name in his autobiography. In a chapter titled “Punching Out Scruff Face,” he claims that he beat the living daylights out of a Navy SEAL (“Scruff Face”) who spoke ill of American soldiers in Iraq. During later interviews, Chris Kyle confirmed that Jesse Ventura was “Scruff Face.” He claimed that Jesse was a laughing stock when he attended a SEAL graduation with a black eye.

However, Ventura took Kyle to court to prove that his tall tale wasn’t true, and a jury awarded the former wrestler $500,000 for defamation and $1.345 million for unjust enrichment. The jury found that Kyle used his lies about Ventura to profit, and now Ventura has filed a similar unjust enrichment lawsuit against American Sniper publisher HarperCollins.

[...]

“It’s as authentic as Dirty Harry,” Jesse Ventura said of the film.

  Inquisitr

After all, it is a Clint Eastwood movie.

I have a feeling that the post-American Sniper jury will be less likely to award Ventura much of anything.

Jesse Ventura’s lawsuit against Chris Kyle isn’t addressed in the American Sniper movie, and the film also avoids tackling Kyle['s] other questionable claims, including a tall tale about using his sniper skills to kill looters during Hurricane Katrina.

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[American Sniper screenwriter Jason Hall explained, “As far as the movie was concerned, it wasn’t a part of the narrative of the story we were telling and the desire to make this allegorical for every soldier out there.”

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However, as the Inquisitr previously reported, director Clint Eastwood doesn’t think that American Sniper glorifies the war — he recently claimed that he believes the movie makes “the biggest antiwar statement any film can.”

Really? That didn’t seem to come across to the people who saw it. If you haven’t read Kyle’s book by the same name as the movie, and if you haven’t watched the movie (I’m guilty on both counts), you might not know how religious Kyle was.

Kyle opened his book by probing the ethics of combat as he wrote about his first sniper shot, when he had to kill an Iraqi woman holding a grenade. “My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that woman’s twisted soul,” he wrote. “I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job. But I truly, deeply hated the evil that woman possessed. I hate it to this day.”

In the film adaptation, Kyle is visibly moved by his first shot and later mentions meeting his maker and justifying each shot he took. He writes that he spent a lot of time praying during difficult times.

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” If I had to order my priorities, they would be God, Country, Family,” Kyle wrote.

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Ever since I had gone through BUD/S (SEAL training), I’d carried a Bible with me. I hadn’t read it all that much, but it had always been with me. [...] With all hell breaking loose around me, it felt better to know I was part of something bigger.”

[...]

In his book, Kyle writes that he told an Army colonel: “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”

[...]

[J]ournalist Nicholas Schmidle wrote. “He tattooed one of his arms with a red crusader’s cross, wanting ‘everyone to know I was a Christian.’”

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” I have a clear conscience about my role in the war. I am a strong Christian. Not a perfect one — not close. But I strongly believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible.”

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“I hated the damn savages I’d been fighting,” Kyle wrote. “I never once fought for the Iraqis. I could give a flying f**k about them.

[...]

”I believe the fact that I’ve accepted Jesus as my savior will be my salvation,” he wrote. “But in that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all deserved to die.”

  HuffPo

Veteran and PTSD sufferer [Eddie Ray ] Routh, who admitted to police that he killed Kyle and the marksman’s friend Chad Littlefield, will have his day in court early next month.

  WaPo

Good luck on that one, son. You’re up against an American Hero. And now, martyr.