"American Sniper" book fabrications

[Piccolo]

It looks like deceased Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle fabricated several stories in his book American Sniper, now a blockbuster Hollywood film directed by Clint Eastwood.

Chris Kyle, author of the runaway bestseller American Sniper, was a military hero who killed 160 people during his four tours of duty in Iraq and is now the subject of an Oscar-nominated blockbuster. He was also a fabulist. Before his tragic murder in 2013, Kyle told a number of extremely dubious stories. In one tale, Kyle claimed he killed two carjackers at a gas station southwest of Dallas, and that his driver’s license directed local police officers who questioned him to contact the Department of Defense. Kyle also claimed he traveled to post-Katrina New Orleans with a sniper friend, set up his gun atop the Superdome, and picked off dozens of armed looters.

The 160 kills are confirmed by the Pentagon. But there are absolutely no records of, or witnesses to, the latter stories. They are, perhaps intentionally, unverifiable. But it wasn’t these fantastical tales of vigilante justice that got Kyle into legal trouble. It was another, much less exciting story — one that wasn’t just unverifiable, but verifiably false. That tale, conveyed in a mere three pages of American Sniper, has put Kyle’s widow on the hook for US$1.845 million in damages. And it may soon make Kyle’s publishers wish they approached the veteran’s claims with a great deal of skepticism.

Nonetheless, in a radio interview following the book’s release, Kyle admitted that “Scruff Face” was Ventura, and he repeated the claim soon after on The O’Reilly Factor. American Sniper shot to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list, becoming a smash hit for its publisher, HarperCollins, selling more than 1.5 million copies by July 2014.

There was, however, a problem: The Ventura story wasn’t true, and Ventura meant to prove it. So he took Kyle to trial, suing him — and, after he died, his estate — for defamation and unjust enrichment. In the United States, defamation cases are extremely difficult to win, thanks to the First Amendment. When allegedly defamatory statements pertain to a public figure, the plaintiff mustn’t just prove those statements were false. He has to prove the defendant made those statements with “actual malice” — that is, knowledge that they were false — or with “reckless disregard” for their falsity. Very few defamation plaintiffs can make it over the high bar of actual malice.

Ventura made it. On July 29, 2014, a U.S. federal jury returned from six days of deliberations to award Ventura US$1.845-million in damages — specifically, US$500,000 for defamation and about US$1.345-million for unjust enrichment. (In order words, Kyle unjustly profited from defaming Ventura, and so his estate must give Ventura some of that money.) Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle, promptly filed for “judgment as a matter of law,” asking the trial judge to reverse the jury’s verdict because the jury clearly got it wrong. Failing that, she asked for an entirely new trial. The judge denied both requests, defending the jury’s verdict as legally and factually justifiable. Kyle’s widow is currently appealing the decision; her odds of winning appear quite low.

You can read the rest of the article here: http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/01...rnor-millions/

[NSXD60]

So, 160 is not enough for you, no, you've gotta trash a dead hero, never mind his PTSD. As for Ventura, that asswipe is a loony conspiracy theorist and deserves to be taken down a notch. What a bastard for going after the widow after she lost her husband.
The laugh is on you that the movie is making a fortune, however.

[Piccolo]

So, 160 is not enough for you, no, you've gotta trash a dead hero, never mind his PTSD. As for Ventura, that asswipe is a loony conspiracy theorist and deserves to be taken down a notch. What a bastard for going after the widow after she lost her husband.
The laugh is on you that the movie is making a fortune, however.

Nobody is denying Kyle's service to the United States but he should not have made up a story about beating up Jesse Ventura for saying he wished more American troops had died in Iraq and then used that story to sell his book. Jesse Ventura is also a veteran who served his country in the military.

By the way, the lawsuit was filed against Kyle before he died and his widow won't be on the hook for the award to Ventura, the publisher's insurance will take care of it.