Texas will honour American sniper by celebrating 'Chris Kyle Day'

[whereisjustice]

42. Unnecessary triangulating/pandering to his red meat base

What next, a heart warming tribute to Darren Wilson? Daniel Pantaleo? A random sociopath?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/kyleclaims.asp

Indeed, the account does not hold water simply on the grounds cited in the passage quoted above. Imagining that SEALs were deployed to New Orleans in the chaotic days that followed Katrina is not exceptionally hard, considering the level of disorder that followed the devastation wrought by the hurricane. But the notion that dozens of Americans were shot dead on mere suspicion of (relatively minor) crimes, on American soil and with the full support of a system of law that otherwise does not allow for such summary
punitive actions, challenges credulity to a very large degree. Moreover, thirty or so bodies of local residents slain in such a manner never turned up as corroborative evidence of such a claim. The circumstance Kyle claimed would have required the silence and compliance of all witnesses, the families of the dead, all involved law enforcement agencies, and untold others who might have become aware of killings meted out under inarguably public circumstances. Had Kyle and his fellows truly dispatched such a large number of looters or "residents who were contributing to the chaos" (who had neither been charged with nor convicted of any crime, much less a capital one), some other evidence of this tale would have emerged. One person disappearing under such circumstances is unusual; thirty or so is truly unbelievable.

All involved had heard the story, and some of them claimed to know of a person who had seen the purported footage — but all of them heard the story from the same source (Kyle himself), and none of them could personally attest to having viewed the alleged security camera footage. And just as in the Superdome sniping tale, the putative victims remain unidentified even now, so no one can possibly verify whether they're even dead, much less the circumstances under which they died.

Moreover, the single claim of this group that stood a legal test of its veracity failed: Kyle's claims about Jesse Ventura were sufficiently non-provable that a jury (deliberating in a country that, by and large, holds a large measure of respect and pursuant leeway for American servicemen) saw fit to award damages to Ventura totaling seven figures, even with the knowledge that Kyle himself hadn't lived to see the sanction and the damages would be levied against his widow and other beneficiaries of his estate.

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/kyleclaims.asp#OWkGx04Fjl9rt4rJ.99