Lazy Saturday Reads: Tales of Chris Kyle, AKA “The Devil of Ramadi” AKA “The American Sniper”

Good Afternoon!!

I could easily stay under the covers today and just ignore the outside world. Yesterday I thought I was getting over my cold, but today the sinus congestion has kicked back in and I’m coughing and I can tell there is stuff in my lungs. To top it all off, there’s a snowstorm outside that is expected to leave a big sloppy mess in its wake; and more snow is predicted for Tuesday. To be honest, I’m having difficulty working up much enthusiasm for the news today, so once again I’m going to focus on a story that has aroused my curiosity recently.

One thing I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of days is the success of the movie American Sniper. I suppose I should see it before dismissing it, but I really don’t want to sit through a movie about a guy who shot hundreds of people at a distance in a pointless war.

The first time I heard anything about Chris Kyle was when he was shot and killed along with a friend, Chad Littlefield on a Texas shooting range. The New York Times reported that Kyle worked with veterans suffering from PTSD by taking them to the gun range and letting them work out their issues there. That just seemed bizarre to me, but I’ve never been in a war or even held a gun in my hand, so there’s no way I could relate to this. Maybe there was something to it.

The alleged killer was a young veteran named Eddie Ray Routh, whom Kyle was supposedly trying to help. According to the Washington Post, the specific details surrounding Kyle’s death aren’t dealt with in the movie about him.

Chris Kyle (left) with Chad Littlefield

Kyle had returned from Iraq in 2009 and was

well acquainted with the difficulties soldiers face returning to civilian life, and had devoted much of his time since retiring in 2009 to helping fellow soldiers overcome the traumas of war….

In 2011, Mr. Kyle created the Fitco Cares Foundation to provide veterans with exercise equipment and counseling. He believed that exercise and the camaraderie of fellow veterans could help former soldiers ease into civilian life.

Mr. Kyle, who lived outside of Dallas with his wife and their two children, had his own difficulties adjusting after retiring from the Navy SEALs. He was deployed in Iraq during the worst years of the insurgency, perched in or on top of bombed-out apartment buildings with his .300 Winchester Magnum. His job was to provide “overwatch,” preventing enemy fighters from ambushing Marine units.

Kyle also wrote a book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” in which he wrote that

[h]e did not think the job would be difficult….But two weeks into his time in Iraq, he found himself staring through his scope into the face of an unconventional enemy. A woman with a child standing close by had pulled a grenade from beneath her clothes as several Marines approached. He hesitated, he wrote, then shot.

“It was my duty to shoot, and I don’t regret it,” he wrote. “My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that woman’s twisted soul.”

Over time, his hesitation diminished and he became proficient at his job, credited with more than 150 kills.

I just can’t relate to any of that, and I really don’t want to see a movie that glorifies that kind of killing. Why do so many people want to see it, and why do they see this man as a hero? I don’t get it. I spent some time yesterday reading about Kyle’s life and the movie from different points of view, and I’m even more mystified now than I was when I began reading.

One thing I learned is that Kyle was a serial liar or fabulist of some sort. He once claimed he had beaten up former Navy Seal, professional wrestler, and Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura in a bar fight. Ventura sued Kyle for defamation of character and won a $1.8 million settlement from Kyle’s estate.

A St. Paul, Minn., jury awarded former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura $1.8 million Tuesday in his lawsuit against the estate of “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle.

On the sixth day of deliberations, the federal jury decided that the 2012 best-selling book defamed Ventura in its description of a bar fight in California in 2006. Kyle wrote that he decked a man whom he later identified as Ventura after the man allegedly said the Navy SEALs “deserve to lose a few.”

Ventura testified that Kyle fabricated the passage about punching him. Kyle said in testimony videotaped before his death last year that his story was accurate.

Legal experts had said Ventura had to clear a high legal bar to win, since as a public figure he had to prove “actual malice.” According to the jury instructions, Ventura had to prove with “clear and convincing evidence” that Kyle either knew or believed what he wrote was untrue, or that he harbored serious doubts about its truth.

The jury’s verdict was later upheld on appeal.

According to a long and fascinating piece by Michael McCaffrey, another wild story that Kyle liked to tell was how he was carjacked by some bad guys and ended up killing them and being thanked for it by the police.

Chris told many people, and some reporters, that just after his return from Iraq in 2009, he was carjacked by two men at a gas station on a remote Texas highway. Chris asked the men if he could reach into his truck to get his keys, and as he did he pulled a pistol from his waistband and shot both men in the chest from under his armpit. The two men were killed instantly. Chris called the police and waited for them while leaning against his truck. The police came, Chris handed them a phone number to call at the Pentagon. The cops called the number, and the people at the Pentagon told the cops that Chris Kyle was a war hero and a Navy SEAL. The police also went inside and watched the gas station surveillance video of the incident. The cops then let Chris go on his way. Chris claimed he got emails from cops all across the country after the incident thanking him for “keeping the streets clean”. Great story. Except none of it is true.  Not a word. There were no carjackers, no dead bodies, no cops, none of it. He made the whole thing up. His big mistake was then telling the story to his SEAL friend, Marcus Lutrell, author of Lone Survivor, and Marcus put the story in his second book, Service: A Navy SEAL at Work. Now it wasn’t just a tall-tale, it was in the public record, and it is demonstrably a lie. The New Yorker magazine and other journalists have investigated the story. They all come to the same conclusion. There were no carjackers. There were no dead bodies. There were no cops. None of it happened. No police departments know anything about it, no coroner ever saw the bodies, no gas station had any surveillance video or ever heard of such a thing and no cops ever responded to the scene and called the Pentagon.

Chris Kyle and his gun

And then there was the tale about how Kyle and another guy had gone to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and picked off looters from the roof of the Superdome. McCaffrey writes:

The second story that was told by Chris Kyle was that he and another SEAL were sent by the government to New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Once they got to New Orleans, Chris and another sniper went to the roof of the Superdome, and started shooting looters in the city. Chris Kyle said this to many people, he also said this on tape. Chris claims to have killed thirty looters all on his own. Helluva story. Only problem is…there’s not a speck of truth in it. Once again this is a total fabrication, or to put it less delicately, a complete, bold faced lie. Chris Kyle never went to New Orleans after Katrina. He never shot ‘looters’. Just like with the carjackers, there are no bodies and no documentary or corroborating evidence it occurred. None. Chris Kyle lied. Again.

Don’t take my word for it…Here are two links to in-depth articles about these two stories. (New Yorker–  LINK     Washington Post –   LINK)

Why would this man, who already had plenty of dramatic true stories to tell, make up these tall tales out of whole cloth? If you’re interested in the psychology of people like this, you’ll probably find McCaffrey’s suggested explanations as interesting as I did.

Eddie Ray Routh

Here are a few more articles to check out if you find the hero-worship of Kyle and his own behavior as interesting and confounding as I do.

The New Yorker: In the Crosshairs — Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper, tried to help a troubled veteran. The result was tragic.

The Guardian: Chris Kyle and the Iraq war are more complex than American Sniper – or criticism of it, by Colby Buzzell.

Slate: How Accurate Is American Sniper? by Courtney Duckworth.

Alternet, via Raw Story: 7 big lies ‘American Sniper’ is telling America about Iraq and Chris Kyle, by Zaid Jelani.

Telesur: American Sniper? by Ross Caputi.

The Boston Globe: Many miss the point of Eastwood’s ‘American Sniper,’ by Ty Burr.

Rolling Stone: ‘American Sniper’ Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize, by Matt Taibbi.

The Washington Post: Trial of Eddie Routh, killer of Chris Kyle, will be darkest chapter of ‘American Sniper,’ by Abby Philip.

What stories are you following these days? This is an open thread.