Jesse Ventura Likens Chris Kyle, Iraq War Snipers to 'Nazis'

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura continues to attack slain Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, saying it does not mean much to describe Kyle as a "hero" because the Nazis had heroes too, Mediaite reported.

"A hero should have honor," Ventura told syndicated radio host Alan Colmes in an interview. "A hero is not how many people you've killed."

Kyle, Ventura said, is "obviously a great sniper" and "a great shot. He obviously did his job correctly."

Then, Ventura asked Colmes: "Do you think the Nazis have heroes?"

Colmes replied that "the Nazis were fighting for a cause we can't condone."

Ventura responded by asking Colmes: "If a Nazi soldier killed a hundred people that had lived" in countries it invaded during World War II, like France and Poland, would that soldier "be classified a hero in Germany?"

Colmes asked if Ventura was "comparing what the Nazi mission was versus what our mission is in war as a country."

"Well, what I'm stating is we invaded Iraq, we were not asked in," Ventura replied. "We invaded a country, we overthrew its government, and then we killed people that lived there."

"Are we analogous to the Nazis?" Colmes asked.

"Well, and the Communists, yeah," Ventura replied.

Ventura claims to have been a SEAL, but he was actually a part of the Navy’s UDT, or underwater demolition team, which merged with the SEALs in the 1980s — after Ventura’s military service.

Last year, Ventura won $1.8 million in a defamation lawsuit against Kyle's estate.

He sued for defamation alleging that Kyle — the hero of the new movie "American Sniper" — falsely claimed in a subchapter in his book with the same name to have punched out a man, later identified as Ventura, in a California bar in 2006 after Ventura allegedly said the SEALs "deserve to lose a few" in Iraq.

Ventura said last week that he will not see the film, in part because he does not regard Kyle as a hero.

"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 said.

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 — a reference to the fictional movie series starring "American Sniper" director Clint Eastwood.

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