There’s a decidedly anti-gun bias in Hollywood these days. The only movies being made either depict the horrors of war or focus on the broken soldiers coming back home. The message is clear: war is bad and it ruins people. That may be true, but Chris Kyle was one person who it didn’t seem to negatively impact in an appreciable way. In his book American Sniper, Chris celebrated his opportunity to kill people in the defense of America. That isn’t exactly the version of Chris Kyle’s life that is portrayed in the trailer — it literally portrays him as a child killer — but we’ll have to see the entire movie when it comes out to see what Hollywood did with his memoir.

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109 COMMENTS

  1. It ain’t just movies. I recently watched a lengthy series of videos supposedly produced by the History Channel depicting the events on Omaha beach on D-Day. They spent more than two hours talking about all the myriad ways that men got maimed and crippled. Through the whole thing I don’t think I heard them mention heroism ONCE. No mention of the reasons WHY we were there. No mention of what we were fighting for. Just an endless recitation of all the horrible ways guys got geeked on Omaha beach. They even gave equal time to the bloody Germans! While I have nothing against Germany or the German people, I’m pretty sure they have their own videos about the war to talk about their own suffering.

    • I will always have a cold spot for Germans and Japs, oh sorry I meant “Japaneese people. It was German people/Germans that tortured Jews in the most horriffic ways and every time (like yesterday on a show about the Treblinka concentration camp) I see that Goddamd German dragging that poor Jewish woman by her hair a fire burns in me and I wonder how many generations it takes to breed-out that kind of Godless evil. And it has to be more than just two. And I don’t see the Japaneese who in the Philipiinees sp?) would toss Philipino babies up in the air and catch them on their bayonets in a much better light either. That stuff just happened in our fathers and grandparents lifetime. It aint been long enough yet, not for me anyway. I wouldn’t trust them in the out house with a muzzle on.

      • Germans and Japanese are no worse or better than anyone else. Many other nationalities did not have clean skirts in WWII. I thought the fire bombing by us and the Brits was fairly nasty and sometimes had little to do with war objectives. Yes, my Dad fought the Japanese infantry and my Uncle was wounded by the Luftwaffe. What happened with the Nazis in Germany or Imperial Nationalist Japan could happen here under certain circumstances.

      • My cold spot is for idiots….

        German by descent and came to the US around 1900 due to a famine in the Ruhr…..Farmers all..

        I’ll put numbers up against yours for those served and fought! Come on! I dare you!

      • “That stuff just happened in our fathers and grandparents lifetime. It aint been long enough yet, not for me anyway. I wouldn’t trust them in the out house with a muzzle on.”

        The same kind of IIIII-DI-OT who hold Germans responsible for the crimes of their parents, is no different than the IIIII-DI-OT who holds people of this generation responsible for past slavery and racism – Children grow up under different circumstances, around different nationalities, races, rules, etc. To think that a child inherits their parents way of thinking, crimes, or responsibility for their actions, is complete RETARDATION!!!

        PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS, WILL YOU!!

    • Bradley Cooper supposedly said the following, which has me more than 50% skeptical about the film (in spite of Clint directing)

      “His story first of all really needs to be told, and it’s also relevant on two fronts: gun control and the need to address the many soldiers who are coming back with PTSD. Medicine has evolved to such a state — soldiers are coming back and they’re going to assimilate into the culture and if we don’t address the mental state along with the physical state it’s going to be a problem.”

      • Matt, I found this puke, Cooper’s interview on the Commie Public Radio show and he absolutely says that. He doesn’t go into any more detail. Ironically, he says that when he was a teenager, he desperately wanted to become a soldier as was “fascinated with the uniform and the guns.”

        I’m very concerned about this movie now. I hope Eastwood does the right thing here.

  3. I’d say there’s a definite anti-war bias, but guns and their use are actually glamourized in most of Hollywood productions.

    • You hit the nail on the head. Hollywood money-makers feel compelled to be activists in the anti-gun political drivel, hoping thereby that people don’t think they are actually the ghools they seem to be for constantly saying, “hey, kids, look at this, a really cool scene of blowing people up with voodoo-powered devil weapons. Fun, huh?” I reflect on George Clooney in “The American” as a recent example. Sex and guns = sales, as Truffaut summarized the thing long ago.

      Yep, they screw minds on both sides, ascribing fetishistic powers to guns on one hand, then politicking to confiscate those guns as if they really did have the endless capacity, nuke-like power, and animism-inspired will of their own that the films portray. And Hollywood certainly doesn’t care about the double negatives inhering in their behavior because….money….which Clooney can attest, buys a lot of good times and body-guards.

  4. Hollywood will make an exception for their anti-gun hate-fest when it comes to pro-government propaganda.

    This is garbage.

  5. Guns are not the man here, and if they do not honor Kyle’s devotion to duty and devotion to flag and country, I WILL protest outside of the theaters it is in. I am retired, so I have lots of time.
    Robert Seddon
    Mineral, Va

  6. Do any of the proceeds go to Kyles family, yes or no? Any clue as to what the arrangement is because if it is like buying his book, will go see it to support his family!

    • Great question. And I hope that a*^%monkey Ventura doesn’t get one dime. I would pay double the ticket price for a short film in which anyone knocks that S.O.B. to the floor.

    • Kyle’s wife still has more money than most here will ever see in their lifetime…bootlickers like you two crack me the hell up. And regardless of whether you like him or not, Ventura was totally in the right in this case.

      • No he wasn’t, he lied and so did Jesse’s little a**licking entourage. I spoke to a guy who was there and he said Chris was 100% correct. I know the bar where it took place and know based on the description of what happened, it happened as well.
        I never thought one way or another about Jesse until this incident.

        • I don’t want make any enemies on here but after hearing Ventura’s side of it I honestly dont think Kyle did exactly what he said he did, and I am totally neutral to. And Kyles wife’s insurance will cover every dime of any money that would have been won also so he wasn’t taking his kids college fund like people was saying also. She had several chances to retract the story by just saying “maybe it was a bit exaggerated” but she chose not to. And Venture had pictures of him the next morning and didn’t have a mark on him or his face whatever, and like J.V. said “me walking into a bar where all of the S.E.A.L.S. hang-out (something was going on there that night,a celebration or something) and saying that would be like walking into a Hells Angels Home Bar and calling them a bunch of pu****s. Like said I don’t care what happened when it comes down to it but I just don’t believe it happened.

      • Poor missguided rude ISIS loving goatpoker, the only boot I have or ever will lick belongs to my wife, and TTAG dont like people detailing or bragging about sexual exploits/role playing on this blog, but suffice to say throughout my life several others have tried to make me lick a boot, they never tried again, nor would you, capcihe tweedledum!

      • Kyle didn’t say it was Ventura in the book. I had no idea who it was. During promotions for the book he said it was Ventura on Opie and Anthony radio show. So it was more slander than libel.

  7. You call that being a “child killer”? Literally that might be true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story and without context the implication is that he’s a “child murderer”. He’s faced with an ethical dilemma, with lives and his career on the line. And it looks like a “good shoot”! That child, guiltless pawn though he may be, is an enemy combatant charging toward Americans with a grenade. Heck, if he takes the shot I’d admire him more for quickly making a risky moral decision to save lives. I’m rooting for him to kill the kid. Kill the kid’s handlers, too. This is nothing new. I remember reading in the biography of Carlos Hathcock that he was put in a position of having to kill a kid. If I remember correctly, the boy was transporting weapons for the enemy Vietnamese, and Hathcock, reluctant to kill the boy, at first disabled the boy’s bicycle with a well-placed shot. But when the boy returned fire Hathcock had to use lethal force to stop him. A totally moral act of killing, It makes Hathcock not one iota less of an American hero. Likewise for the scenario depicted in the trailer in this post. Anyway, Clint Eastwood is a good director, and not anti-gun. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. He’s made many terrific movies. Eastwood didn’t necessarily produce the trailer, either. It’s a snippet of a scene out of context.

    • Yep. Saving 10-20 lives by having to shoot a child is unfortunate, but IMO the way the trailer displays it I would do the same thing. There’s no doubt about the motives of the action.

      • And maybe that’s true in that situation, but I hope more people take away that if the US had not been there in the first place then he would not have had to shoot a kid(in the movie at least) and the troops he was watching after would not have been in danger, and the kid would still be alive. Sounds like a win win win to me. Pretty good reasoning to question the government more than they get questioned when it comes to matters of foreign policy so we don’t get duped again….I’m not hopeful about that.

      • Yeah, it shows the gut wrenching turmoil one goes through in war and some of the decisions one must make to keep fellow soldiers safe. It shows ultimate responsibility.

        • The same that apply to shooting an adult. The age of a person abusing their agency does not magically erase or change the situation (ie a threat to ones life.) It may be perceived as a greater travesty because usually a child is only acting in a way that is consistent with what he or she has been taught. Yet, despite this, the that remains.

        • Oh well, how about y’know; not invading a country? That usually helps I have heard. Just like you can’t claim self defense if you pick somebody off at 600 meters I doubt you can call it defense if you invade a country halfway across the globe.

        • “Oh well, how about y’know; not invading a country?”

          Talk to the President and your Congress-critters. That’s not the decision of the guy in the sandbox on over-watch.

    • Good comment, Paelorian! THIS enemy counts on using kids to kill American Soldiers. You don’t let several American Mothers and Fathers lose their sons because you have a moral compunction about killing a kid whose Mother sent him to kill your Countrymen. It’s a terrible choice, but if your enemy forces you to make it, you have to make it clear to them that it’s a bad idea. [Not that they’ll ever get the point.]
      Who would any of us lose more sleep over…one dead Jihadi kid or a pile of dead and wounded fellow American Soldiers? [Likely it was a suicide attack on the kid’s part anyway.]

    • Shoot the mom first for giving him the weapon. It may save the kid’s life if it stops him in his tracks.

    • First of all, it does not show him taking the shot.

      Second, it does show him carefully observing the situation, noting things that most civilians who will be seeing the movie will need pointed out for them (woman not swinging her arms, what an RPG grenade looks like) and not drilling the guy with the phone even though he is given authorization. There is nothing reflexive in the scene, factors are carefully considered and the compressed time in which life-or-death decisions have to be made is demonstrated. The audience will be having to make the decisions along with Kyle, in the same amount of time. If the movie is sympathetic to the problems that soldiers face (and Eastwood has been pretty realistic about the problems inherent in being a soldier in prior movies) then either this scene or another will set up the audience to scream “SHOOT! SHOOT!” only to find out that NOT shooting was the right thing to do. If Kyle is the hero of the piece (and I expect he will be), then he has to more than an unthinking killing machine that shoots everything that moves. He has to be smarter than the audience and the audience has to come to trust his judgment better than their own. He has to be able to do things that they themselves cannot do…like decide in 3 seconds whether to kill a child and mother, or allow his brothers to die. I’m thinking this is a pivotal scene in the movie where the audience comes to realize that whatever decision Kyle makes, it is the right one because it HAD to be the right one. In either this scene or another, the audience will make an ‘obvious’ decision, Kyle will make the other decision and Kyle will be right.

      IMO what is portrayed is how difficult it is to be a sniper, with the ability to kill at will and the responsibility to do so appropriately, and the tremendous amount of information that needs to be processed in a short period of time dictated by real-time events, not the requirements of a screenwriter or director, and not from a desk somewhere in a FOB. I don’t think Clint Eastwood would make a movie with an unjustified killer as the hero.

      We’ll have to see.

  8. “Chris Kyle was one person who it didn’t seem to negatively impact in an appreciable way.”

    Ehhhh…. I think that may not be entirely accurate…

    • Right on this one.

      …y’all need to read his book. Its a journey thru his many deployments, includes his struggles, and shares his wife’s thoughts throughout. His life after his military career is included as well.

      He shines a light on the good and bad of being at war. Nothing i’ve read quite like it, except maybe Band of Brothers.

    • +1000000

      We are not the worlds police. We have no right and these days no money to continue this course of action.

      That said don’t ever misconstrue that kind of posture and think we won’t defend ourselves. That would be a mistake.

    • Sovereign nations,yes. Puppet dictators put in power by the West to hold off Russian and Iranian aggression…no.

    • As history has demonstrated countless times, evil very much would like to be left alone in the dark and grow and metastasize into an existential threat to life and nation.

      Adults understand that.

      • Just because you love cheering team America every time the gov decides to invade the borders of the latest boogeyman state does not mean those actions are prudent. Don’t even trot out ww2 which was extremely destructive to the American economy(pacific conflict was slightly different, but FDRs sanctions on Japan weren’t a real help), and had we not entered and just let the fascists and communists slaughter each other then maybe we wouldn’t have had to deal with 50 years of communist scares where third world dictators announced they were “communist” to get free goodies which made it easier for them to stay in power. There are evil dictators all over the world and the vast majority simply want to maintain there stranglehold on that region. Tragic as it may be. It is not in their best interest to be an aggressor towards more powerful nations. Are we going to go after all of them? By your logic they could fester out of control. The Middle East is a story in what happens when you meddle with a culture who doesn’t tolerate meddling. Yes some of them are practically medieval barbarians, but before the western governments started meddling they probably couldn’t have pointed to the US on a map. You talk about being an adult, but you should really movd past a 5th grade history book.

        About half of the people here hate the government line for about 90% of things, but when it comes to US foreign policy, they are benevolent angels who can do no wrong.

      • As history has demonstrated countless times, evil very much would like to be left alone in the dark and grow and metastasize into an existential threat to life and nation.

        This is understandable, but this is not reality in my opinion – perhaps I should have clarified. I fail to see how us installing European union and US friendly leaders in the Ukraine is stopping “evil.” Or why we invade helpless poor countries such as a Iraq (maybe because of the oil?) or Afghanistan and install US friendly leaders, but at the same time avoid countries such as North Korea (maybe because of a lack of oil?). It is clear to me politics doesn’t rely on the presence or absence of “evil” but the international/domestic corporate and governmental back scratching for the profitability of the state or control of the citizenry (US citizenry as well as foreign citizenry).

        As history has demonstrated countless times, evil very much would like to be left alone in the dark and grow and metastasize into an existential threat to life and nation.

        like the United States? Seems we have been left alone in the dark and grown to a massive global power ready to police all other countries for the sake of our control and profit.

        Adults understand that.

        Not really sure how to address this. I don’t think it was necessary for a thoughtful discussion.

  10. Mental gymnastics over nothing. If Kyle was on his game, the moment dish-dash Dianna handed off the munition was when the round heads down range. Instead a moment of disbelief allowed the transfer. My coin says the age of the carrier plays no part of the outcome.

  11. I don’t remember that scene in the book. I’m sure I’ll rent it once it hits the movie store.

    • I’m not sure if it was in the book or not, but supposedly the incident is real. I think he ends up shooting the woman though so this may be taking some amount of deviation.

    • In his book he states his first shot was a woman, first and only time he shot a woman. I highly doubt he ever shot a child. He never states he did in his book. I dont think NSWC, SOCOM, or Department of Defense released any new classified material to support this scene. I think they added a child for dramatic affect. But you never know. War is hell

      • Sepp Alleburger shoots a lot of Soviet women snipers in his book Sniper On The Eastern Front. I highly recommend reading his book.

    • It is, in fact, the very first pages of the book and it varies a good bit from the scene on the trailer. The woman sets the grenade, not a child, and his chief is repeatedly ordering him to shoot the woman, which he does. He recognizes that she is a dead woman walking either way. The only two outcomes are either she dies alone or she takes a squad of Marines with her.

      There is none of that BS where it’s a child walking along, or where he alone is having to make a tough call. This doesn’t bode well for the movie’s adherence to the book or reality.

      • +1 yr second paragraph, read the book folks, I hope director Eastwood wasn’t made to drink the Kool-Aid. 🙁

  12. The trailer portrays him as a child killer? Did we watch the same trailer? In the trailer I saw a grand total of 0 children were shot. I saw a man weighing whether to pull the trigger, but not the outcome of that decision.

    Stating a viewpoint then trying to distort the facts to match it is the kind of crap anti-gunners pull. I expect better from this site.

    As pointed out by an earlier commenter, it’s a Clint Easteood film, so we perhaps shouldn’t be quick to lump it as anti-gun without ever seeing it, eh?

  13. War is bad, and it really does ruin people.

    That fact tends to get left on the cutting room floor, with slow mo footage of muscular actors in makeup dodging bullets to rock music. A film which shows the lefties and skinny jean crowd that the bad guys don’t fight fair might be what we need in a day and age of “The Culturally Inoffensive Military”. I’d love a war movie which promotes the Second Amendment, but I would settle for one which promotes reality.

    • Well said. When we realize the bad guys hide behind the innocent do we realize the real sacrifice of our soldiers. My hat is off to them for standing against this real evil of cowardice.

    • nearly 100% of modern historical war dramas like this since All Quiet on the Western Front are fixated on how war breaks people, so I’m not sure where you are coming from. War has not been “glorious” outside of fictitious Arnold movies for like 100 years. Hurt Locker, anyone? Really, more movies overemphasize the horror, like in Apocalypse Now, which was actually an adaptation of a fictional adventure novel set in Africa, but which many see as an accurate portrayl of the Vietnam war.

      • “fictional adventure novel set in Africa…”

        Really? Heart of Darkness is an “adventure novel?” My my what they teach in college these days.

      • Milius pointed to Heart of Darkness as an inspiration for the narrative development, but the essential memorable elements of the story were drawn from life. Mike Forces really were stood down after an officer went native with one. The mix of surfing and helo-raiding in one day wasn’t a wildly imaginative creation, but was experienced by many who crewed choppers but lived at night a few yards from the water at China Beach. Heck, the Marines who left us their grass-roofed mega-hut and tennis court also left us their surfboards. And so on. The original script was much more an action thriller than an exercise in moral ambiguity. And Milius could (maybe still can?) kick some skeet-shooting azz, a TTAG-noteworthy fact.

        • Ummm. I guess I stand corrected? Milius blah blah blah.

          The ghost of Joseph Conrad rolls in his grave.

  14. Child killer? Anti-gun agenda? Seriously time to go outside and get some air. You’re no better than a liberal making shit up like that.

    Since the day I was born Hollywood has had a love affair with guns and violence. Individuals in Hwood might be antigun, but as a whole, they take guns to the bank better than smith and Wesson.

    And the trailer is showing a gut wrenching choice that is a part of war. Not portraying Kyle as a child killer. maybe politics is a better fit than a gun blogger.

    • I, too, find the trailer isn’t making Chris out to be a child killer. It very explicitly cuts rapidly between the nun and child in Chris’ scope and images of his own family, exactly building up the tension that does occur when one sees the very human in a potential target, identifies in some way.

      I think that at least since Aeschylus wrote The Persians (a remarkable act) warriors (he was one) understand that in war many are victims, even among those on the attacking side. When satraps send a nation’s youth to war the youth become, of necessity, warriors, and the mothers on both sides begin to lose sons.

  15. 1. I found the book disappointing. Not necessarily the stories that were told in it, but I didn’t think it was well written/organized.

    2. Although I’ve only seen him in The Hangover, for whatever reason I don’t like Bradley Cooper as an actor. The choice of Mark Wahlberg made me like Lone Survivor a lot less than I would have otherwise, so take my opinion for what it’s worth…which is less than the paper this is not written on.

    • He’s got decent range as an actor and seems like an okay guy judging from interviews, but Cooper definitely has that “I’m secretly trying to nail your girlfriend” vibe that rubs me the wrong way.

  17. War is bad/horrible, though sometimes it is the only option. Only time you are guaranteed to come out of it without PTSD is if you are doing it in self-defense. By self-defense I mean that the enemy comes at your gates.

      • I didn’t say it was. Only option is more like when we defended ourselves against the Serbs (I am Bosnian). That is “only option” scenario.

      • Bush’s entry into Iraq was a Hail Mary to seed the Middle East with a democracy to divert the Islamist train hell bent on nuclear destruction. The Muslims were stupid enough not to grab the golden ring we gave them on a platter. So now the Middle East is firmly onboard the Islamist train that will end with some Islamist group over playing their hand and lighting off a low grade nuke or dirty bomb in the US/Europe/Israel. The citizens of that western government will force their politicians to glassify a large section of the Middle East. So be it. We gave them the opportunity and the dumb azzes love their Sharia too much. The Germans and Japs were a lot smarter. But we know that too. We’re dealing with a 7th century cult.

        • You really don’t know what it was like under Saddam Hussein? Just like you don’t know what it was like under Gaddafi.

          Contrary to you I know how it was (I have some contacts). It was pretty nice, stable economy, no bombings, nobody trying to kill you all the time. Sure, Saddam wasn’t a saint but he was much better than what has come after. Point is, agitators rile up the rebellious groups and wingnuts (every country has them, including the US) in the country and then you hear about rioting in those countries and later on civil war. It really is an elegant way to destroy a country, simple, no traces and really effective.

        • It was pretty nice, stable economy,…

          …and Mussolini kept the trains on time and the Nazi’s made some snappy fashion statements.

          I’m not going to rehash the endless justifications of why Saddam warranted an invasion. Go check a history book not written by the common core leftists (you’ll have to look hard).

          Bush is guilty of believing in a unicorn named “moderate Islam”. He rolled the dice hoping that there were some intelligent and brave Muslims that would seize the ring. Now there is no question as to the validity of that belief. Now we just live our life and hope that an Islamist nuke doesn’t nuke our particular town. Odds are the target will be one of the progressive home bases of Washington or NYC. Will be interesting to watch all the uber-left screaming for the nuclear retaliation.

    • If you are saying that many thousands of Bosnians did not end up with a major case of PTSD, I think you are seriously in denial.

      • Oh we did wind up with PTSD from all the bombings and mass executions, one guy I know survived only because he was in the back row when getting executed, thus the bodies of his neighbours and friends covered him and he survived. But I don’t know anybody who has mental problems from killing somebody. Even the sniper guys I know didn’t have PTSD from killing people completely unaware of them (and in one case that was with a 50 BMG, that stuff leaves very little of somebodys face). And snipers usually wind up the most troubled, so that is telling something.

    • Martha ‘Bo’ Billian Meyer This is an opportunity to expose the delusion some (most?) returning veterans have about firearms.

      I picked this gem above from said wretched hive of scum and villainy. What does this lady think people in the military do exactly?

      Be happy youre not allowed on that facebook page, I dont even HAVE a facebook and 5 seconds caused me to have to get up and take a break.

  19. From reading articles back when the kyle\ventura trial was going on…The estate was said to make 10 mil from the rights to the movie

  21. Won’t be too bad as long as Hollywood remembers to remind viewers that guns are evil objects that only belong in the theater of war, because they are only used in crime in peaceful countries, and NEVER to deter crime in any way. Also when they wrote the 2nd ammendment they were talking about rocks, not guns.

  22. “War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.”

    -Pindar

    Yes, war is a bad thing. I’m willing to say that war might be the worst thing we as a species do. I hope to be a stranger to war forever.

    I also hope I never have to use my weapon against another human. I will, if it is necessary, but it is not a first resort.

    We need to be careful as a gun owning community to respect the grave potential of our actions with our firearms. The gun is just a tool, but it is a powerful tool. It’s wise to remember that.

    • Especially when our “Top Men” say, “hey you guys! go fight those guys over there. No time for questions. We’ll wait here.”

  24. I didn’t see it as portraying him as a child killer but rather dealing with an ethical trifecta
    1) A nun
    2) A woman
    3) A child

    All three are enemies and what a difficult situation he was in.

    Of course I am sure nonsensical liberals may see him as a child killer and would prefer a squad of ours to die rather than one of theirs, much like Vietnam, but I didn’t see it that way.

  25. These treasonous anti American zealots depict all military as evil, there real agenda or real message is too suppress your freedom of thought , choice 0r anything else, do as I believe or I’ll Kill you! what most of these liberal pricks don’t get is that a grenade in the hand of a child is more lethal than in an adults, hands as our troops are not really ready to believe kids are used as weapons! in some culture kids are a disposable resource !

  26. Only a frothing jingoistic clown could ever see anything even remotely anti-American or anti-military in that trailer.

  27. From the lunatic fringe, Lew Rockwell’s blahg claims that the trailer was jingoistic and something that Himmler would love.

    Eye of the beholder, y’all. Eye of the beholder.

  28. It must have been really hard on him to defend ‘Merica against those invading women and kids that all parachuted into the Midwest to satiate their greedy thirst for ‘Merican oil and ”Merican blood.

    • Not a big fan of the Iraq War, but probably the survival of fellow American troops and oneself is the top priority of most American soldiers sent to the sand box. I personally think as misguided as the Iraq War was, I do think the Iraqi people missed an opportunity to build a better society. Sort of what I thought about Vietnam also.

      • I strongly agree with your first statement. I well remember a drill sergeant saying to us in basic (RVN days) “You may not agree with the war, and may not feel enmity toward the NVA/VC, but trust me, the day your first bud takes a bullet, that will change.”

        As for the “missed opportunity” speculation, both the people of southern Vietnam, and of post-Saddam Iraq, had enough religious and political differences to make renewed civil war inevitable, it seems to me. In RVN the Catholic leadership would yield nothing to the Buddhists, and the landowners, too, were unwilling to settle, including French landowners. In Iraq the Shia/Sunni divide seems similarly intractable. In the sense of “if only they could see their folly,” though, I agree with your sentiment.

  29. It’s rare these days that I’m interested in anything coming out of Hollywood these days. This could have potential although I don’t think Cooper would be the first choice to play lead.

  30. “Not a big fan of the Iraq War, but probably the survival of fellow American troops and oneself is the top priority of most American soldiers sent to the sand box. I personally think as misguided as the Iraq War was, I do think the Iraqi people missed an opportunity to build a better society. Sort of what I thought about Vietnam also.”

    I was not a big fan of the Iraq war either. But, I have to say that Vietnam seems to be doing OK but Iraq looks like a total mess and will probably never recover fully. Rooting for the Kurds to take over the place. Looks like they are the only ones that might make a decent country out of it.

  31. But, I have to say that Vietnam seems to be doing OK …

    Yeah…just okey dokey. I kinda wonder it the average Vietnamese understands that their chosen political ideology directly contributed to the genocide of a couple million neighboring Cambodians? However, being on the Left means never having to say that you were wrong or sorry.

  32. I’m not too worried of the portrayal of him shooting an “innocent.” The gray area where the enemy is using women and children. He described it in his book, which is why it is in the movie. Fine, however, I cant tell you how disappointed I am. There are two completely different rifles shown with bradley cooper behind. One has an adjustable comb and a Leupold scope. The other has a fixed comb with a nightforce scope. Hes shown playing with the ocular focus or the zoom, either of which do not make clicks. I sure hope it’s just the trailer and the movie as a whole does Chris Kyle’s memory honor.

    AND THE DOPE IS TAPED TO THE WRONG DAMN PORTION OF THE STOCK!!! ugh…

  33. I’ve read the book too. I bought it when he was still alive, and it’s a bit of a surprise to read that he died just last year. I think lots of people who handle guns have probably read his book, or at least some other military novel. There are lots of those “Moms Demand Action” type of people who accuse gun owners of having some kind of “hero-complex” – but what’s so wrong about that? What heroic thing are THEY doing? Do they really think joining some facebook group and going to rallies is going to stop rapists, robbers, and killers as they pop-up?? “It makes our Moms feel like badasses….” says Watts. Oh, does it now?? I didn’t know inaction did that. I think the willingness and the desire of CIVILIANS – not law-enforcement; not military – to do something beyond dreaming that everything will always be alright because heroes in military or law-enforcement exist, is what Americans should aspire to.

    But that’s getting a bit off-point. This is Hollywood, so I hope this doesn’t become either just another action packed movie to lure in the masses and their money, or another military recruitment tool, like Hurt Locker undoubtedly was. I believe it should stay close to the book, and part of that is showing the grisly things that Chris Kyle needed to do during the war. It showed how the militants used kids for their own purposes and how those children could no longer only be considered kids. I think that is what this trailer is trying to show, not that Kyle is a child killer, although that is how it may come off as without open-mindedness and unbiased consideration. One of the quotes I remember from the book, and this may not be 100 percent accurate, is “A child can kill you just as dead as a grown man.” A truth, that when it comes to possible threats, that you cannot discriminate. Cowards would take drugs to get up the balls to go into battle, they would use their own women and children to go to war. Women carrying suicide bombs under their Burqas to hide them – Children taken from their families and brainwashed to become child soldiers: Chivalry has no place in war.

    • I just wanted to point out, that by saying “and this may not be 100 percent accurate,” I was referring to the accuracy of exact words that I quoted, not that the meaning of what I quoted may be inaccurate.

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