Good for Ventura. Because of the verdict against Kyle, Ventura now has a chance to win a defamation case against Harper Collins. Fuck Murdoch and his legions of liars.
You heard him say that? Personally?
I just watched an online discussion with John Cleese, and there was an audience question. “What would you like to do that you haven’t had a chance to do?” Without hesitation he answered, “Strangle Rupert Murdoch with my bare hands.” 
Kyle claims more than twice as many kills as the alleged official Navy kill count. Though I haven’t seen any neutral sources for the official kill count, only Kyle backers making the claim.
Weird, I don’t remember actually having a number in the book.
I’m guessing you have a problem with Eastwood because of his politics, I’ve never seen a longer string of childish shit-spewing posts as yours in this thread considering you’re the OP. It’s like you literally started a thread not to discuss a movie but to just make immature posts about Clint Eastwood. Eastwood has won two academy awards for directing, and neither movie (Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby) comes anywhere close to the sophomoric descriptions you have chosen to use about Eastwood’s movies. In fact, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima also don’t come close, his two other recent war movies. Letters in fact portrays Japanese soldiers as heroic and has scenes showing the ugly side of American soldiers in war (they execute a POW.)
I did see the movie because I make it a habit to see every Best Picture nominee and typically many of the Best Actor and Best Director nominees (time allowing–it’s my only time each year I generally watch new movies.) I’m very behind this year, but so far I’ve really enjoyed Best Picture nominees Birdman and Grand Budapest Hotel. I disliked American Sniper, and despite being a fan of Eastwood as a director (and I think he rightly deserves the Oscars for directing he has for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby) I’m genuinely shocked as to why the Academy nominated this movie for Best Picture.
I don’t even think Bradley Cooper’s performance is particularly interesting in this movie. About the only thing I can say is this movie does give some air time to the struggle military families go through during deployments and the trouble readjusting to civilian life and PTSD, but honestly I can name other movies that do it a lot better. The overriding problem I have with American Sniper as a movie is on every issue it cover it does so thinly and without nuance. It’s just a boring, uncomplicated movie. I’m shocked it was as bad as it was, to be honest, because I have liked Cooper’s work in more serious movies once he started to move away from Frat Pack type stuff and I have liked a ton of Eastwood’s movies.
Instead, I’d rank this movie far below Lone Survivor, a decent but not amazing action movie covering modern war, and starring Mark Wahlberg (who generally has no acting chops at all and is usually only good for meat head action roles.)
This and Foxcatcher are both on my list of Oscar movies (Foxcatcher for Director, Actor, and Supporting) that I genuinely have just not enjoyed. Both share something in common, in that I knew a lot about the subjects before seeing the films. I grew up amateur wrestling and followed the incidents surrounding Foxcatcher very closely as they went down, so I knew a ton about the Schultz brothers and Jon du Pont. My issue with Foxcatcher I think is somewhat similar to American Sniper in that I feel it’s thin on areas that are important, with Foxcatcher it seems more interested in stuff that’s frankly not as interesting as the real motivations behind the Schultz’s and du Pont, as someone really informed on that story there is a much more fascinating narrative that was basically not told at all and was replaced with vague “weirdness” from du Pont and a desire to portray a sibling rivalry that didn’t exist (the two brothers were never even at Foxcatcher together, and Marks’ time at Foxcatcher was very bbrief.)
I followed the Chris Kyle saga largely because of his conflict with Jesse Venture and all I had read relating to that. I don’t think my knowledge of Kyle ruined the movie for me, but I have a largely negative opinion of the man personally. I won’t take anything away from what he did in combat, I’m retired Army that served largely in the decades between Vietnam and 9/11 which saw relative peace so I have a lot of respect for the guys like Kyle who served long deployments. I also have no issue with snipers or what they do, it’s an extreme old fashioned idea that snipers are cowardly or “evil” or “sinister” in comparison to any other soldier. But I do think that in the reflection back stateside that went on before Kyle wrote his book, he shouldn’t have called Iraqis “ragheads” or made up the various lies he made up in trying to promote the “myth of Chris Kyle.” Recent reports about his legal case with Ventura have stated that the defense had no trust in the Kyle family witnesses as they all told conflicting stories and most admitted to being drunk. Ventura is an old man on blood thinners and showed absolutely no bruising from being hit by this big bad 6’+ 240 lb Navy SEAL? Sorry, not buying Kyle’s story at all on that one.
He claims about 100 more than “confirmed”, the concept of an “official kill count” is a little bit misunderstood. Soldiers kills aren’t tracked like players in a video game.
However, in a war zone a sniper needs to report things to commanders and information on the number of enemy killed is something that would frequently be reported. In situations where bodies are recovered official reports can somewhat accurately link those bodies to the reported kills a sniper reported. Snipers work with spotters and coordinate with other teams of soldiers, so basically if you have multiple people saying “yeah he shot someone and killed them” then the sniper might informally call that a “confirmed kill.” Confirmed meaning I guess if you compared the snipers records to a mixture of official documentation and witness statements after the fact you could corroborate it. An “unconfirmed kill” is one in which either no one but the sniper witnessed it at all, or where no one could verify the person shot was killed.
The concept of this confirmed kill has been around at least since WWII in my extensive reading of this sort of thing, and has never been official for snipers. There are kills in combat that are confirmed. For example in aerial combat there has been a mixture of official and unofficial confirmed kill concepts (the famous “Ace” moniker being given to those with 5 confirmed kills of enemy pilots), the Germans tracked this stuff pretty officially in both world wars. In WW2 planes often had cameras which could legit confirm a lot of kills. However despite that and the many witnesses possible to these aerial combats it’s generally accepted many Aces (especially the ones with really high kill counts like Richthofen or Hartmann) are attributed a good chunk more kills than actually happened. For snipers I don’t know of anything official or systemic in the annals of U.S. military history, but we’ve had snipers trading on their “confirmed kills” (basically meaning kills they can sorta prove) for a few generations now.
Award citations will sometimes note specific or approximate numbers of enemy killed, too, for example Audie Murphy’s WWII Medal of Honor citations notes the number of enemy he killed in the engagement with the vague “killed or wounded about 50.”
Basically, there is some evidence a reasonable person would accept that Kyle killed 150+ people in combat, and it’s not unreasonable he killed “some number” more. For all the character and truth flaws floating around Kyle and what I view as a dishonorable (especially for guys who are supposed to not talk about their business) commercializing of your military service that Kyle was deep into when he died I don’t think it should be thought that his prowess at what he did is vastly exaggerated.
There are a few alumni and service organizations specifically for SEALs. UDT is welcome in those organizations.
Not In person. In an interview. Below is the full interview when he first reveals in public his story about the bar fight. Around 22:45 he states he considers Ventura a SEAL along with those that were in UDT.
Yeah, that’s not the same as official recognition. Also, I’m not indicating that SEALS > UDT, just different, despite commonalities. I’d give either of these communities a “Hooyah” if I saw them at a function.
I’m not sure what you are looking for. Chris Kyle and other current members considered Jimmy Janos aka Jesse Ventura to be a SEAL. For this discussion I think that is really all that matters.
No, I definitely don’t intend to watch this.
Just any cite that would back up your “official stance” assertion.
If there isn’t any, I understand - no biggie, and we can move on and agree to disagree.
https://www.navysealmuseum.org/
The National Navy SEAL Museum has as part of its mission statement:
Not sure if the supports of contradicts what has been said here. Clearly they are recognized and honored as part of the family.
There’s also the UDT-SEAL Association - https://www.udtseal.org/ - which also puts both groups on equal footing.
And one person’s comments online:
I understand the difference between the two groups; I went to Navy Dive School in '95, worked with Navy divers of various ilk, and I’ve sread a bunch of history on anyone who has worn tanks or rebreathers in the Naval services. I haven’t for one sec said that Ventura was a bad guy/liar/evil/not a real man, and I’m not trying to score political points or attack his military service.
My only assertion is that when he was in his designator was different than the SEALs, and the pin he wore on his chest was different than what was/is worn by SEALs, and the job he did in the Underwater Demolition Team (not SEAL Team) was different.
Everyone that actually gets listened to on this topic considers the pre-SEAL UDT members to be SEALs and accepts them as SEALs. I mean there isn’t usually an official ruling on something so trivial, especially when the consensus is so broad. But you’re entitled to be an outlier, just not entitled to have anyone take the position seriously.
If you believe that the Iraq war was unjustified or illegitmate in any way, then this movie, essentially, is American Murderer.
Not really, no. You can think that toppling Saddam Hussein’s government was unjustified, but still think that fighting the myriad insurgent groups (who were killing more Iraqi civilians than anyone else) is justified. You can also think that an unjustified war has soldiers on both sides committing killings that aren’t “murder.” Murder doesn’t just mean killing, it means an illegal/immoral killing. There’s a ton of people that don’t consider every German to have served in WWII to be a murderer, just guys on the wrong side.
You can certainly think Chris Kyle is a murderer, too, I’m just saying your hypothesis is not correct that if you think x you must believe y.
I wouldn’t find the movie interesting in the best of circumstances. I don’t much care for war films.
The fact that it plays fast and loose with the truth doesn’t matter to me. People who think that “based on a true story” makes for better movies deserve what they get.
OTOH, it’s going to make Jesse Ventura a lot of money.
I believe I would take the verdict of a jury (which actually heard the witnesses under oath) over your hunch.
I watched Das Boot the other day, and while I’m pretty much dead set against the actions of the German military circa 1940, I didn’t view the crew of the titular submarine as murderers.
Martin, please follow my lead and post facts, not your feelings if you want to be taken seriously. Much appreciated.
On to other topics…I think viewing the soldiers in a war through a black and white prism is a mistake; most are just doing their job the most effective way possible and trying to keep themselves and their buddies safe. And a snipers job is to take out the enemy and also cause some psychological damage. I’ve seen nothing that says that Kyle did anything but a great job in his role as a sniper.