Jesse Ventura Rants About ‘American Sniper’ (Again)
You would think that former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura would have lost his breath after continually ranting about American Sniper just after it was released. And you’d think that he’d have gotten somewhat fed up about talking about Chris Kyle, the soldier that American Sniper was based on. However, he decided to call into Alan Colmes’ Fox News Radio show in order to talk about the show again. And this time, he decided to branch out even further to criticize the Iraq war.
As mentioned, Jesse Ventura, a former Navy SEAL himself, has been very vocal about how he feels about Chris Kyle, a man whose estate he successfully sued for defamation after Kyle lied about punching Jesse Ventura in his memoir. Since then, Ventura has been critical of American Sniper, as well as Kyle in real life, stating that he doesn’t view Chris Kyle as a hero — quite the opposite, in fact. Ventura also compared America’s foreign policy with Nazism and Communism during the phone interview with Colmes.
“A hero should have honor. A hero is not how many people you’ve killed. You know he’s obviously a great sniper. He’s obviously a great shot. He obviously did his job correctly. Alan let me fire this one at you: Do you think the Nazis have heroes?”
“[…]When they invaded a country, when they invaded Poland, when they invaded France, and if a Nazi soldier killed a hundred people that had lived there, would he be classified a hero in Germany?”
When asked by Mr. Colmes about whether or not he thought America was really like Nazism, Ventura dug in his heels and answered in the affirmative.
“Well, and the Communists, yeah. We behave the same way now. I said this before, I said, ‘That’s how George Bush killed my American dream.’ I never believed that my country would line our military up at the border of another sovereign nation, invade that country, overthrow its government, occupy them without being asked. We invaded, and all on lies.”
Ventura also stated just after American Sniper was released that he wasn’t going to go see the film, as it ties the Iraq War to 9/11, suggesting that the invasion of Iraq was a direct response to the New York City terrorist attacks. However, the reason provided by the Bush administration had nothing to do with 9/11; the war was over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction allegedly being developed by Saddam Hussein. As Ventura said at the time, “It’s as authentic as Dirty Harry.”
If Jesse Ventura continues as he currently is, we probably won’t be waiting long before we hear more about how he feels about American Sniper, or America’s foreign policy, for that matter.
[Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty via the Huffington Post]
