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Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I mentioned the defamation suit. It's one of a whole series of lies or potential lies. Like his claim that he was up on a New Orleans rooftop picking off people during Katrina or in a car-jacking. Or his claim that he gave all the proceeds of his book to charity. I think it's pretty hard to defend the notion that Kyle the man didn't have a pronounced tendency to lie, but you're a capable lawyer, I'm sure you could do it. At least one jury hasn't bought that shit, though. I think you'd need to count wins like Hank to have a hope of prevailing on that argument.
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Does he make those claims in his book?
For example -- a quick Google search pulls an article saying that his family -- not him, but his family after he died -- made the claim that all proceeds from the book went to charity. (But you're a capable lawyer, I'm sure you could find a way to pin that lie on him.)
The story about the Katrina killings also smells a bit fishy. Snopes reports on it -- they are debunking Kyle's claim, but to me they end up casting doubt on whether he ever made that claim:
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The SEALs began telling stories, and Kyle offered a shocking one. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, he said, the law-and-order situation was dire. He and another sniper travelled to New Orleans, set up on top of the Superdome, and proceeded to shoot dozens of armed residents who were contributing to the chaos. Three people shared with me varied recollections of that evening: the first said that Kyle claimed to have shot thirty men on his own; according to the second, the story was that Kyle and the other sniper had shot thirty men between them; the third said that she couldn't recall specific details.
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So, what really seems to have happened is that three people said that they were talking with Kyle; one remembers that Kyle claimed to have shot thirty men; another remembers that Kyle claimed that he and another sniper shot thirty men; and a third doesn't remember anything at all. This suggests that he didn't make a public claim about it, but at most was in a shit-talking session with some SEALS who were talking tough and who all remember different things.
The carjacking story appears to be one he actually told, and probably false. So, yes, he was a screwed-up guy (which the movie captures fairly well), and he was a pro-gun guy and those people tend to hump each other over their self-defense stories. Dumb thing to do? Sure.
So, yeah -- a guy who spends many days lying on rooftops waiting to kill people, which includes having to figure out which man (or woman, or child) in street-clothes is a threat that should be killed and which isn't, is a little fucked-up by the experience. But you and Ty are awfully quick to condemn him, to suggest that there was nothing positive about him, and to act as if he was evil rather than acknowledge that maybe what he was put through was part of that. And, of course, to suggest that a movie you haven't seen is designed to create a cult around him -- it's creating that cult, but that's because of people who think in a mirror-image to your black-and-white view.
I guess acknowledging that I have difficulty judging a person who went through something I cannot imagine means I'm just a "clever lawyer." At least, in your eyes. What's life like up on that mountain-top, oh great one?
