In the Crosshairs: Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper, tried to help a troubled veteran, tragic

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/03/in-the-crosshairs

JUNE 3, 2013 ISSUE

Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper, tried to help a troubled veteran. The result was tragic.

BY NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE

On the morning of August 2, 2006, three Navy SEALs walked onto the roof of a four-story apartment building in Ramadi, in central Iraq. One of them, a petty officer and a sniper named Chris Kyle, got into position with his rifle. Peering through his gun’s scope, Kyle scanned the streets below; as other American soldiers searched and cordoned off homes, he waited for insurgents to appear in his sight line.

It was an especially bloody phase of the war, and Kyle, who was thirty-two at the time, had distinguished himself amid the violence. That summer, he recorded his hundredth career kill—ninety-one of them in Ramadi. He was on his way to becoming one of the deadliest snipers in American history, with a hundred and sixty confirmed kills. In a written evaluation, his commanding officer reported that Kyle had “single-handedly thwarted a large-scale attack on a U.S. Marine Combat Outpost,” adding that his “performance under fire cannot be overstated.” Two previous evaluations had recommended Kyle for SEAL Team Six, the unit that later killed Osama bin Laden, and Kyle had received two Silver Stars for his achievements in combat.


Eddie Ray Routh, left, served in the Marines for four years. Kyle, right, wrote a best-selling memoir about his life as a SEAL.
CREDIT A. J. FRACKATTACK; PHOTOGRAPH: LEFT: REUTERS; RIGHT: ERIC TANNER


In “American Sniper,” a memoir that was published in 2012, and went on to sell more than a million copies, Kyle recounted some of his most dramatic tales of marksmanship. There was the time in Ramadi that he shot two insurgents who were riding tandem on a moped with a single bullet. “When you’re in a profession where your job is to kill people, you start getting creative,” Kyle wrote. On another occasion, he killed an enemy fighter from more than a mile away. A former officer in Kyle’s platoon said that Kyle was willing to spend hours setting up the perfect shot, and joked, “He was extremely patient while being a sniper. He was not that patient otherwise.”

To other servicemen, Kyle, an affable, brawny Texan with reddish-blond hair, could seem like Paul Bunyan in fatigues. An ex-Ranger, whose unit was housed in Ramadi on the same base as Kyle’s SEAL platoon, recently told me about the day that two Iraqi spies—both working for the Americans—reported being trailed by members of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The spies feared that they would be kidnapped. Kyle climbed a ladder that had been affixed to a palm tree and hid among the fronds. When the Al Qaeda members appeared, he killed them both.

FULL story at link.

[JI7]

1. trying to help a soldier with PTSD by taking them to a shooting range

[cherokeeprogressive]

2. Maybe starting PTSD treatment with something the person suffering from it was familiar with?

[JI7]

3. maybe if it was some professionals , not some gun nut racist and liar

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. You're calling a dead man who was killed by someone he was trying to help a racist and liar.

Sleep well.

[JI7]

5. yes, racists and liars are not immortal

[cherokeeprogressive]

12. Well; drywall and microscopes are not aerodynamic either so swallow anchors until you turn green.

Then, tell me what was your highest rank when you served your country...

[JI7]

14. doesn't matter , it doesn't excuse his lies which were about someone else who served the country

also.

[GGJohn]

16. Jesse Ventura?

That CT nut?

[JI7]

17. yes, i'mnot a ventura fan but kyle still lied about him and VEntura won a lawsuit over it also

[GGJohn]

18. I'm not denying that.

[cherokeeprogressive]

20. Jesse "The Body" had his ass kicked by four different guys I know of...

OUTSIDE THE RING...

Once during his "career", and three times since.

Not going to say where or when, lest Jesse take food out of the mouths of their children in order to save his "reputation".

Fuck Jesse Ventura with a cactus and someday I hope he chokes to death on the word SEAL.

[JI7]

23. "Fuck Jesse Ventura with a cactus and someday I hope he chokes to death on the word SEAL"

yet you find offense with calling kyle a liar

[cherokeeprogressive]

25. I can still participate in shoving the cactus up Jesse's ass. Chris Kyle is dead and buried.

Please oh God give me the chance...

[Logical]

40. Go find him, let us know how it turns out internet tough guy! nt

[jen63]

32. Ventura was a SEAL. n/t

[Logical]

39. LOL, but it proves fucking Kyle lied about shit. "not going to say when and where" says it all!!!! n

[jen63]

31. Yeah,

Ventura served the country as a SEAL also. Although in his time he was UDT which was then merged with the SEALS when they were created. All UDT have the right per the military to refer to themselves as SEALS.

[redgreenandblue]

42. Chris Kyle was most certainly a racist.

That much is well documented and was never denied by him.

[951-Riverside]

6. Kyle probably bragged about all the women and children he took out too

That and being around gunfire would set a soldier with PTSD off.

[GGJohn]

7. You got a link proving that he killed women and children?

[Jesus Malverde]

11. Thats what snipers do, they create a kill zone and kill everything that moves in it.

You can see these brave heros in action in Syria, on liveleak.

A favorite tactic is to wound a human and then pick off those that try to rescue them.

They are cowards.

[GGJohn]

13. So, no links showing that Kyle killed women and children?

They are NOT cowards, most often they're behind enemy lines with just a spotter, it takes a special kind of bravery to become a sniper, sit in one spot for hours or days on end waiting for your target to appear knowing full well that the danger of being discovered and killed are astronomical.
And that's bullshit that snipers create a kill zone and kill everything within it, they do create a kill zone, but good snipers don't kill non combatants.

[Jesus Malverde]

21. spend some time on liveleak watching snipers in action.

They don't go behind enemy lines, they spend their days camped in a building shooting anything that moves on the front lines.

His first kill was a woman who cradled a toddler with one hand

"I had to do it to protect the Marines," Kyle told Time magazine a year ago. "You want to lose your own guys, or would you rather take one of them out?"

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/us/texas-sniper-killed-kyle-profile/

“People ask me all the time, ‘How many people have you killed?’” he wrote in “American Sniper.” “My standard response is, ‘Does the answer make me less, or more, of a man? The number is not important to me. I only wish I had killed more. … The Navy credits me with more kills as a sniper than any other American service member, past or present. I guess that’s true.”

The snipers of Sarajevo brave men or cowardly killers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper_Alley

According to data gathered in 1995, the snipers wounded 1,030 people and killed 600 - 225 of whom were children.

[GGJohn]

26. Ok, ok you proved your point.

I surrender.
Thanks for the links.

[Jesus Malverde]

22. He did brag about it.

Chris Kyle had no regrets about any of the 160 people he killed as a Navy SEAL sniper during his five combat tours in Iraq.

His first kill was a woman who cradled a toddler with one hand and held a grenade in the other.

"I had to do it to protect the Marines," Kyle told Time magazine a year ago. "You want to lose your own guys, or would you rather take one of them out?"

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/us/texas-sniper-killed-kyle-profile/

Grenade or baby bottle, at 1000 yards who knows...

[Schema Thing]

24. Kyle knew, godddammmmknit!

[Jesus Malverde]

8. This is america, we celebrate and lionize KILLERS

Most cultures would be ashamed of people like this. He killed over two hundred people in a cowardly way from a distance.

The scary part is we have these monsters living among us.

[Boreal]

10. THANK YOU! nt

[dflprincess]

28. Most vets don't brag about the people they killed

I have a photo of my dad when he was getting one of his bronze stars (WWII) - his mom proudly displayed until the day my dad asked her to put it away at least when he was there. When I was old enough to hear it my mom told me that he always referred to that picture as "being congratulated for killing people" - and not in a proud way.

I've met very few veterans who like to talk about what happened in the midst of combat.

[Jesus Malverde]

34. I wish there were more men like your dad.

He sounds like a great guy who carries a heavy burden.

[dflprincess]

43. Most my friends' dads were veterans of WWII or Korea

sadly, they are all are gone now.

I never heard any of those men brag about what they had done in the war. Very few of them ever told us (even after we were old enough to hear it) us what they had seen - and those who did waited until the end of their own lives and still didn't go into graphic detail.

[Boreal]

9. Chris Kyle, Fox Snooze hero

And sociopath who described Iraqis as "savages" for resisting an invasion by the west who had NO RIGHT to be there.

Were Kyle just a touch more literate, he might recognize the term untermenschen, a German expression that encapsulates his view of the Iraqis who took up arms to repel foreign invaders. From his perspective, they were incurably inferior to their “liberators” and possessed of an inexplicable hatred toward their natural betters.


For some reason many Iraqis resented the armed emissaries of the distant government that had installed Saddam in power, built up his arsenal and apparatus of domestic repression, and then conferred upon the inhabitants of that nation the unmatched blessing of several decades of wars, embargoes, airstrikes, disease, and the early, avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.


“The people we were fighting in Iraq, after Saddam’s army fled or was defeated, were fanatics,” Kyle insists. “They hated us because we weren’t Muslim. They wanted to kill us, even though we’d just booted out their dictator, because we practiced a different religion than they did.”

http://www.freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2012/02/pseudo-courage-of-chris-kyle.html


WTF is this lionizing of a psycho killer who took pride in his murders of Iraqis?

[Pastiche423]

19. Horribly sickening

[Unknown Beatle]

27. The fuck you say.

He killed two men in a moped with one shot and he bragged about it. I don't give a shit if he killed a hundred men with one steely-eyed look, the fact remains that he killed and bragged about killing. That's some psychopathic shit right there, really proud with chest puffed out while breathing on his fingernails so that he could buff them kinda fucked. And he's a hero to boot? Sad state of affairs.

[Dawson Leery]

29. No hero. He claims to have

taken the law into his own hands during Hurricane Katrina.

He called the Iraqis (which were supposedly being liberated from Saddam) "Savage, despicable evil".

Just another ignorant redneck, nothing to be proud of.

http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/collection/the-controversial-true-story-behind-american-sniper-20141222

[Omaha Steve]

30. Marta remembered this article from last year

We have a friend that went ape over the film, so she suggested I post this.

OS

[Logical]

36. Link? nt

[Omaha Steve]

37. My fault

I meant the OP itself was her idea: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/03/in-the-crosshairs

[Logical]

38. OK, sorry man. My bad!! nt

[tularetom]

33. The term "hero" doesn't mean what it once did

If you listen to our corporate media, every American who ever set foot in Iraq or Afghanistan is a hero.

I've even heard the term applied to the millions of us who served during peacetime and never left the US.

Somebody is trying real hard to justify the bazillions of dollars we spend on these silly ass wars.

Was the late Mr Kyle a hero? IMO, no. Was he a coward? I see nothing to demonstrate that he was. He appears to have been an imperfect human being, as we all are, with a truckload of issues.

[Logical]

35. He also libeled Jesse Ventura. nt