Jilani writes: "The film American Sniper, based on the story of the late Navy Seal Chris Kyle, is a box office hit, setting records for an R-rated film released in January."
Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle in 'American Sniper.' (photo: Warner Bros/Rolling Stone)
Chris Kyle: "I Only Wish I Had Killed More"
26 January 15
The Clint Eastwood film suggests Chris Kyle was haunted by his actions in Iraq. The truth is more unsettling
he film American Sniper, based on the story of the late Navy Seal Chris Kyle, is a box office hit, setting records for an R-rated film released in January. Yet the film, the autobiography of the same name, and the reputation of Chris Kyle are all built on a set of half-truths, myths and outright lies that Hollywood didn�t see fit to clear up.
Here are seven lies about Chris Kyle and the story that director Clint Eastwood is telling:
1. The Film Suggests the Iraq War Was In Response To 9/11: One way to get audiences to unambiguously support Kyle�s actions in the film is to believe he�s there to avenge the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The movie cuts from Kyle watching footage of the attacks to him serving in Iraq, implying there is some link between the two.
2. The Film Invents a Terrorist Sniper Who Works For Multiple Opposing Factions: Kyle�s primary antagonist in the film is a sniper named Mustafa. Mustafa is mentioned in a single paragraph in Kyle�s book, but the movie blows him up into an ever-present figure and Syrian Olympic medal winner who fights for both Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and the Shia Madhi army.
3. The Film Portrays Chris Kyle as Tormented By His Actions: Multiple scenes in the movie portray Kyle as haunted by his service. One of the film�s earliest reviews praised it for showing the �emotional torment of so many military men and women.� But that torment is completely absent from the book the film is based on. In the book, Kyle refers to everyone he fought as �savage, despicable� evil. He writes, �I only wish I had killed more.� He also writes, �I loved what I did. I still do. If circumstances were different � if my family didn�t need me � I�d be back in a heartbeat. I�m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL.� On an appearance on Conan O�Brien�s show he laughs about accidentally shooting an Iraqi insurgent. He once told a military investigator that he doesn�t �shoot people with Korans. I�d like to, but I don�t.�
4. The Real Chris Kyle Made Up A Story About Killing Dozens of People In Post-Katrina New Orleans: Kyle claimed that he killed 30 people in the chaos of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, a story Louisiana writer Jarvis DeBerry calls �preposterous.� It shows the sort of mentality post-war Kyle had, but the claim doesn�t appear in the film.
5. The Real Chris Kyle Fabricated A Story About Killing Two Men Who Tried To Carjack Him In Texas: Kyle told numerous people a story about killing two alleged carjackers in Texas. Reporters tried repeatedly to verify this claim, but no evidence of it exists.
6. Chris Kyle Was Successfully Sued For Lying About the Former Governor of Minnesota: Kyle alleged that former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura defamed Navy SEALs and got into a fight with him at a local bar. Ventura successfully sued Kyle for the passage in his book, and a jury awarded him $1.845 million.
7. Chris Kyle�s Family Claimed He Donated His Book Proceeds To Veterans� Charity, But He Kept Most Of The Profits: The National Review debunks the claim that all proceeds of his book went to veterans� charities. Around 2 percent � $52,000 � went to the charities while the Kyles pocketed $3 million.
Although the movie is an initial box office hit, there is a growing backlashagainst its simplistic portrayal of the war and misleading take on Kyle�s character. This backlash has reportedly spread among members of the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences, which could threaten the film�s shot at racking up Oscars.
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**Is nowadays are real word? Ah that's one of the great mysteries of the universe....
"Nowadays" is NOT a 'real word'. Except for the fact that "usage" determines acceptable English, and this bastardization "Nowadays" has infiltrated Standard English from "somewheres" in the Ozarks.
I know that it probably *sounds* perfectly acceptable in Texas.
Could you BE any more snarky ? What is more trivial, the question, or someone wiling to take valuable time out of their day to lift a leg on the person asking the question ?
One contemptible addition some decades back was the inclusion of "DoctorWelbyish " (since removed) in the USA.
Thank you for your important and very interesting coverage.
Anyone else want to chip in right now?
There's only one thing I can think of that can do that: GENERAL STRIKE.
We've a long, long way to go to protect people in foreign lands from the continued war and war crime from the West and most importantly the USA.
Predator Drones murder on a continued basis in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia for certain. How many other places we do not know.
This alone is heavily indicative of what is to come.
But they can't hide forever from a better-informed world outside of the "approved" US Corporate State chowderhead media.
There is a lot more than just P'v't Manning's fate riding on this show trial.
It might just serve to plunge the US back into further isolation as experienced during the Dimwits/Chain-g ang reign of error and terror and shoot it down to the bottom of the world trust and popularity list, where it is currently at the lower-middle (source; BBC).
Gawd knows how Manning is bearing up during this prolonged lynching but his stoicism and perhaps resignation (or is he being drugged?) should be a spur to world support for his Nobel prize nomination. Sign on at http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5459.
Stuff it all back down their hypocritical throats!
And I hope that they enjoy reading this on RSN's surveilled database.
"Ah fart in their general directions" (Monty Python's Holy Grail). I hope they get a chuckle at some of my daffy scribblings on RSN.
Abb-abb-abb-t-th-th-at's al ffolks: He-heh-heh!
Complicity to murder and genocide is on trial, and Manning refuses to be complicit. Do we, as human, also? We are the ones on trial, but you cannot call it one. Should we let them convict us without our knowledge?
Hierarchies have lead to garbage gathering police who are deputized to 'take it out,' the garbage which is provided in droves by the central media outlets as lies, or, as a paper-trade. They have to produce so much garbage to successfully alter the cultural landscape permanently, or tectonically, hollowing out under our feet instead of being hallow, or having any predisposition for that. Purposefully, they drive people from their evolutionary design to learn and to participate.
Learning leads to learning-to-lea rn (Bateson) where we would, then, know the 'container' relevant to the learned where both exist together as form, not word. "In the beginning, all was mush and without form," Denial allows proceeding upon no truth at all. This is usury.
We make up for missing truth when being instructed to be in a container that contains none, or, maybe is 50/50. Tricks are not epistemology, or real knowledge, in any event. One needs imagination. Learning, in reality, is not a trick. It would be an oxymoron. If there is any distinction to made, any leap for cognitive powers we could possess, for the power that makes it all just, this is another drama designed, solely, to make us shudder, and is not random.
"..A military spokesman said that the media operations center located half a mile away from the courtroom was "a privilege, not a right...."
It seems amazing to hear someone in the US military advise us that they grant privileges. And all while the US tax payers fund their entire lives from salaries and health care to retirement.
This is an indication of the power we have given to a group that is supposed to defend the USA. Now they tell us what our privileges are. And even more frightening will be the day that an American civilian is arrested by the military and indefinitely detained as allowed by the NDAA.
One more clear indicator of Eisenhower's warning about the "military-indus trial complex. It's all out of control!
Well, that's the US attitude to healthcare too and education, innit!? It's only for the elite and privileged.
There's a long way to go before this country joins the "civilized" world -if ever!
What's a "secure telephone"?
I agree that life goes on" (Oobladee-oobla dah!) but this country is becoming more and more like Spain's Franco era and Suharto's Indonesia I'm tired of repeating this), both supported and armed by the "land of the faux-free-to-sh op and the home of the cowed and surveilled".
It's the QUALITY of life we are looking at here and which is endangered!
Te US is becoming more and more like one of these Sci-fi box rooms where the walls keep sliding in on and constricting it's occupants, or the four-poster bed that lowers it canopy in the night to smother it's sleeping occupants.
Wake up and smell the shite -then fight!
The U.S. Army, as with other entities with the U.S. empire's power structure is ethically bankrupt. The more it protects an monetary empire's interests, the more chance for change.
There is also an NSA entity, PRISM, that is apparently being used to spy on the emails of who knows how many people, foreign and domestic.
The U.S. Constitution has been violated by the very status quo power brokers-and their supporters-who claim to support it. And it's nothing new.
progressives.
Is that the message?
Who do you think will win that 'discussion'?
Well, the IRS hasn't attacked anyone since Nixon ordered them to, and that was the liberals, the FBI, for all its' faults has a long horrendous record of attacking liberal groups and still does, although they occasionally go after obvious criminal right wing groups, the brunt of their actions still falls on liberal groups. And the ATF goes after the people committing gun crimes, which is nearly 100% conservative. So, in this case, they do go after conservatives mostly, but it isn't targeting conservatives per se, it's targeting subversives.
And the military isn't attacking liberals per se, they're attacking the first and fourth amendments.