Every movie rewrites history. What American Sniper did is much, much worse

[jhungary]

Just depends on how you interpret this movie, while on the surface its all about good vs evil.. a subtle hint on Kyle's obsession with protection and not what he was doing and for what reasons is shown in the movie. There are various narratives on the real Kyle; some are coherent with the movie whilst others say kyle was a redneck who routinely boast of his kills.

In the end, considering the script.. Eastwood has done justice in a way that only those looking for smallest changes in expression and emotion will see. Its not about good vs evil, but its about the protecting those whom you care about. Even as the wrong reasons for GW-II start to hit "kyle", he suppresses these under the guise of being the protector. The narrative about Mustafa, the Butcher and all cater to the usual "Slam bam thank you maam" audience back here..but at the same time the idea of why what was done was done is shown. They were soldiers, under orders.. and at the end had to make up their reasons to fight and survive.
@jhungary

As i said, the politic is not in play in this movie, believe it or not, i did think Eastwood trying to downtone the war in Iraq, instead of glorify it.

This movie would have made exactly the same if a different war was used as the backdrop. You can literally interchange the name of person and the war to anything War after WW1.

This story is about a small time kid feel compelled to join the military and he was send to war, the kid once think he is invincible but then some how he met a woman in a bar and got married, and things change, he was torn between serving his country or.serving his family, and as he progess further into the war, he is changed, he became ignoring and rough around the edges, he became disassociated, and his family want him back home, and he did, but feels cant adjust and the sense of duty keep him going back to war, simply because, your buddies is still there.

Finally his wife offer him an ultimatum and he came back home for good and he have to face the demon, while he is rotting away in a foreign battlefield, he now have to gather or rally his last once of sanity and try to be a human again, and he did, but he was killed way too young.

This is what basically the story is, it doesnt matter which wa, its all going to be the same, my dad fought in Nam, my brother fought in somalia my grand father fought in Europe and I fought in Iraq and afghanistan, places change yet the story stays the same, Me, My brother, My father share the same story as Chris Kyle, that is a common ground of a soldier.

This is what I see in this movie, i dont see war movie often, especially the one I been in, I still suffer from PTSD and looking at something that close to home bring back a lit of bad memories, I even serve the same time and in the same AO with chris kyle and i heard the legend first hand.

As i dont really like any movie, movie is a movie, its something you kill 1 and a half or 2 hours with, so i am not gonna say i like this movie but i did see myself in this movie, probably every grunt from any given country would have the same feeling i do.

Iraqi Sniper: The legendary insurgent who claimed to have killed scores of American troops

A still of a video tribute to the Iraqi sniper known as 'Juba' appears as propaganda online.Photo: Internet Archive

• American Sniper review: Clint Eastwood creates a tense, complex movie

In American Sniper, the wildly successful yet controversial film that tells the story of Chris Kyle, said to be the most lethal sniper in US military history, the titular marksman has a clear foe: A mysterious insurgent dubbed "Mustafa," believed to be a former Syrian Olympian.

While the film portrays Mustafa as a mighty rival to Kyle, in the autobiographical book upon which the film is based, Mustafa earns just one paragraph."From the reports we heard, Mustafa was an Olympics marksman who was using his skills against Americans and Iraqi police and soldiers," Kyle wrote. "Several videos had been made and posted, boasting of his ability. I never saw him, but other snipers later killed an Iraqi sniper we think was him."

Propaganda videos made by the Iraqi insurgency can still be found showing footage of US soldiers being killed by an Iraqi sniper known as 'Juba'. Photo: Internet Archive

It's not clear who Mustafa was or if he ever existed, but there were similar legends of Iraqi insurgent snipers. Probably the most famous was that of "Juba," a sniper with the Sunni insurgent group Islamic Army in Iraq, whose exploits were touted in several videos released between 2005 and 2007. Some attributed scores, even hundreds, of kills to the sniper, and accounts from the time suggest that he got deep under US troops' skins.

"He's good," Specialist Travis Burress, a sniper based in Camp Rustamiyah near Baghdad, told the Guardian in 2005. "Every time we dismount, I'm sure everyone has got him in the back of their minds. He's a serious threat to us."

According to ABC News, one video claiming to show "Juba" showed at least a dozen attacks on US troops. In that video, the sniper claimed to have killed 143 US service members. "He definitely knows what to do with a rifle," Major John Plaster, a retired Green Beret sniper instructor, told ABC upon seeing the tape. "And he has the judgment and discipline to take a shot, wisely choose an escape route, and immediately depart to avoid capture. This is not a zealot; this is a calculated shooter."

"Juba" even sent a message to the US president in one video. "I have nine bullets in this gun and I have a present for George Bush," the sniper tells the camera. "I am going to kill nine people."

Snipers have long been a terrifyingly evocative feature of warfare: Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev was said to have killed more than 200 Germans during the Battle of Stalingrad, though his famous duel with a German rival is probably a myth. Finnish sniper Simo Hayha became a national hero after he killed more than 500 Soviet soldiers during the 1939-1940 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union.

In Iraq, where much of the fighting was taking place in urban areas, US troops seemed especially vulnerable to snipers. The Islamic Army in Iraq's distribution of DVDs showing the sniper operating in Baghdad seemed to be a successful act of psychological warfare.

After a couple of years, "Juba" seems to have ceased activity. Some have suggested that the sniper must have been killed, while others say that no one sniper ever actually existed. "Juba the Sniper? He's a product of the US military," Captain Brendan Hobbs told Stars and Stripes in 2007. "We've built up this myth ourselves." Certainly, some of the higher death tolls attributed to Juba seem far-fetched.

However, the legend of Juba lives on online. Many videos claiming to show "Juba" in action still float around the internet, purportedly showing the mysterious sniper picking off American personnel. At one point, there was even a website and blog that claimed to have been set up by the "Baghdad sniper" with messages in English and French. A few years ago, rumours circulated on conspiracy websites that "Juba" had been – shock! – an Israeli agent all along.

Much like the Mustafa of "American Sniper," at some point the legend of Juba seems to have become intertwined with that of Chris Kyle. Kyle is said to have had his own nickname among the insurgents – "The Devil of Ramadi" – and his high kill rate likely struck fear into them. When Alex Horton, a former infantryman in Iraq, wrote a remembrance of Kyle for the New York Times, he referenced the Iraqi sniper.

"For American troops, Juba was a terror, but for the insurgents, he must have been a comforting legend," Horton wrote. "I'm willing to bet Iraqi insurgents had the same debates and fears about the Devil of Ramadi that we did about Juba."

The Washington Post

Iraqi Sniper: The legendary insurgent who claimed to have killed scores of American troops



Like the article said, there was NO MUSTAPHA. But there was JUBA. Point.

oh my god....That article did not proof anything, no where kn the article did it mention anything about this Juba person did exist, if you carefully read the article , it uses claim, suggested not verified and confirmed.

Tho the article did use verified and confirm the kills and status of some "KNOWN" famous sniper such as Simo and Kyle itself

The article suggested the legend of Juba did exist but fail to give any proof, and the article itself uses careful wording to make sur3 they are not to he hold accountable to say Juba did exist....

As far as i concern, both Mustafa and Juba both were urban legend

 

[Alienoz_TR]

oh my god....That article did not proof anything, no where kn the article did it mention anything about this Juba person did exist, if you carefully read the article , it uses claim, suggested not verified and confirmed.

Tho the article did use verified and confirm the kills and status of some "KNOWN" famous sniper such as Simo and Kyle itself

The article suggested the legend of Juba did exist but fail to give any proof, and the article itself uses careful wording to make sur3 they are not to he hold accountable to say Juba did exist....

As far as i concern, both Mustafa and Juba both were urban legend

Chris Kyle has a movie. JUBA has real event videos. Real Sniper was JUBA, not that joker Chris.

Embedded media from this media site is no longer available

At 15:00 it is written as he/they claim/s:

143 American soldiers killed
54 American soldiers wounded
5 American officers killed
6 American snipers killed

 

[jhungary]

Chris Kyle has a movie. JUBA has real event videos. Real Sniper was JUBA, not that joker Chris.


At 15:00 it is written as he/they claim/s:

143 American soldiers killed
54 American soldiers wounded
5 American officers killed
6 American snipers killed

you are wrong, i made 1 kill video, so i kill 10000000 iraqi insurgent, I am the real SNIPER, BOTH CHRIS KYLE AND JUBA OR MUSTAFA STEP ASIDE

 

[Alienoz_TR]

Lies, damned lies and US military cover-ups
The Pentagon is reeling after two lethal episodes uncovered by diligent journalism show trigger-happy US Army helicopter pilots and US Special Forces slaughtering civilians, then seeking to cover up their crimes.

The worldwide web was transfixed this week when Wikileaks posted a 38-minute video, along with a 17-minute edited version (above), taken from a US Army Apache helicopter, one of two firing on a group of Iraqis at a Baghdad street corner in July 2007. Twelve civilians died, including a Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a Reuters driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

At a press conference in Washington DC, Wikileaks said it had got the footage from whistle-blowers in the military and had been able to break the encryption code. The Pentagon has confirmed the video is genuine.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the US military has finally admitted that Special Forces troops killed two pregnant Afghan women and a girl in a February raid in which two Afghan government officials also died. Brilliant reporting by Jerome Starkey of the Times has blown apart the US military's cover-up story that the women were killed by knife wounds administered several hours before the raid.

It now appears that the knife wounds may have been inflicted by the Special Forces troops retrieving their bullets from the dead or dying women's bodies. Starkey reported that Afghan investigators had determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also "dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath" and then “"washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened".

The 17-minute video recording the US military's massacre from the air in Baghdad is utterly damning. The visual and audio record reveal the two Apache helicopter pilots and the US Army intelligence personnel monitoring the real-time footage falling over themselves to make the snap judgment that the civilians roughly 1,000ft below are armed insurgents and that one of them, peeking round a corner, was carrying an RPG, that is, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The dialogue is particularly chilling, revealing gleeful pilots gloating over the effect of their initial machine-gun salvoes. "Look at those dead bastards," one pilot says. "Nice," answers the other. Then, as a wounded man painfully writhes towards the kerb, the pilots eagerly wait for an excuse to finish him off. "All you gotta do is pick up a weapon," one pilot says.

Then a civilian van, seeing the carnage, pulls up. A man jumps out and starts dragging the wounded man towards the van. The pilots implore the intelligence monitors to give them the go-ahead to strafe the van, about which they have made the instant, fatally erroneous judgment that this is an insurgent rescue squad. A few moments later, the intelligence monitors, with zero visual evidence underpinning their judgment, give the go-ahead.

Another salvo finishes off the wounded man and his would-be rescuer, kills other civilians in the van and wounds two children in the front seat. US ground troops arrive on the scene and report the presence of wounded children. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," one pilot tells the other. There are further sniggers as a US armoured vehicle rolls up. "I think they just drove over a body," one of the pilots cackles.

In the wake of the lethal onslaught in 2007, the US military denied that any error had taken place, its version of events faithfully cited by the New York Times under the headline: '2 Iraqi Journalists Killed as US Forces Clash With Militias'. The NYT reported: "According to the [US military's] statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed."

The footage made public by Wikileaks makes it clear this was fiction from start to finish.

Defence analyst Pierre Sprey, who led the design teams for the F-16 and A-10 and who spent many years in the Pentagon, stresses two particularly damning features of the footage. The first is the claim that the Reuters photographer’s telephoto lens could be mistaken for an RPG. "A big telephoto is under a foot and half at most. An RPG, unloaded, is 3ft long and loaded, 4ft long. These guys were breathing hard to kill someone."

Sprey's second point is that an Apache helicopter makes a very loud 'Whomp, whomp' noise. "Twelve guys are unconcerned, with loud helicopters right overhead. Imagine if they were planning an assault on American troops. They’d be skulking along walls, spread out. They would not be walking down the street, totally ignoring the helicopters."

A retired US Marine was even blunter in an email exchange: “Not a good show at all. The group on the ground were brandishing nothing that ‘looked’ or appeared as weapons especially the voiced 'RPG' which is so obvious when loaded. And then again - they were told in advance by intelligence (I am sure by the tone in the flight) that these people were bad guys. The Apache crews were just stupid and the intelligence clowns pointing them and egging them on are guilty of murder – 'you are clear to engage'. GMAFB. [Give me a fucking break.]"

In the aftermath, the US military claimed that machine guns and grenades had been found at the scene. Sprey comments that by then the cover-up was probably already underway and the weapons and grenades planted. According to Reuters, their men had been working on a story about weight-lifting when they heard about a military raid in the neighborhood, and decided to drive there to check it out. Local witnesses say there was no fire fight anywhere near where they were gunned down by the Apaches.

Reuters - which by the time of the attack had already had four employees killed in Iraq by the US military (now up to eight) - demanded an investigation, which the Army says it undertook, finding no breach of its rules of engagement either by the pilots or US Army intelligence.

The reaction of David Schlesinger, Reuters' editor-in-chief, to the release of the footage by Wikileaks has been disgraceful. Schlesinger said on April 5: "The deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh three years ago were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones. We continue to work for journalist safety and call on all involved parties to recognise the important work that journalists do and the extreme danger that photographers and video journalists face in particular."

This anodyne blather elicited a furious email aimed at Schlesinger, sent two days later to The Baron site "for Reuters people past and present". It came from a former Reuters editor-in- chief and general manager, Michael Reupke, who wrote: "The flabby response to the shameful murder of photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh by reckless US forces is not reassuring. What of their families? Why do we leave it to others to make the running? Is this a Thomson effect? Michael Reupke (outraged and angry!)."The final sentence alludes to the 2008 takeover of Reuters by the media conglomerate Thomson.

In fact Reuters was shown the Apache video by the US military shortly after the killings, but raised no stink. Requests for public release under the Freedom of Information Act were denied. Finally whistleblowers handed the video to Wikileaks.

Leave the last word to a retired US Army man, answering the email from the retired US Marine quoted above: "The damage this incident and its video evidence will do is immense… it will irrefutably confirm for many that large chunk of anti-American propaganda which insists the American flyers are just playing computer shoot-em-up games using real flesh and blood as a proxy for the digital figures they usually slaughter only in the arcades.

"How much is simulator-training responsible for the disconnection from reality demonstrated in this incident? The crew was detached from reality… How [is] the Army… producing crews that, having the potential for such incompetence, cannot detect it among themselves? If anyone in that crew had paused and asked if the action being taken was correct, surely it would have been aborted…. The Army has to find out why."

Lies, damned lies and US military cover-ups | News | The Week UK

 

[kamrananvaar]

Jesse Ventura Won't See 'American Sniper'; Says Chris Kyle Is No Hero
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — American Sniper is tops at the box office but don’t expect to see former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura lining up at a theater for it.

Ventura, a former Navy SEAL, won $1.8 million in a defamation lawsuit last year against the estate of the late Chris Kyle, the SEAL protagonist of the movie, which has sparked debate over whether snipers should be considered heroes. Ventura said Wednesday he won’t see the film partly because Kyle is no hero to him.
"A hero must be honorable, must have honor. And you can’t have honor if you’re a liar. There is no honor in lying," Ventura told The Associated Press from his winter home in Baja California, Mexico. He also noted that the movie isn’t playing there.
Ventura also dismissed the movie as propaganda because it conveys the false idea that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. “It’s as authentic as Dirty Harry,” he said, referring to fictional movie series starring Clint Eastwood, the director of American Sniper.

Ventura testified Kyle fabricated a subchapter in his American Sniper book in which Kyle claimed he punched out a man, whom he later identified as Ventura, at a California bar in 2006 for allegedly saying the SEALs “deserve to lose a few” in Iraq. Ventura said it never happened.

The jury gave Ventura the legal vindication he craved. Publisher HarperCollins removed the passage from the best-seller, and it gets no mention in the movie. Kyle’s estate has appealed. Ventura’s separate lawsuit against HarperCollins remains pending.
The former wrestler is now working on the second season of his online-only political talk show Off the Grid at Ora.tv, which he records in Mexico, where he lives in a solar-powered home with a satellite Internet connection.

Ed Huddleston, a lawyer for Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle, said they won’t comment on Ventura’s remarks because the lawsuit is on appeal.

Kyle was killed in 2013 on a shooting range. The former Marine charged in his death goes on trial in Texas next month.

The American Sniper film has been a sensation at the box office and has earned more than $200 million domestically since it was released last month on Christmas day.