Why Chris Kyle's Claim he shot more than 30 People in Post-Katrina New Orleans is proof the American Dream still has a Pulse

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed." -- Achilles in Troy (2004)

The story of Chris Kyle is one of those that makes you want to believe the United States of America still exists. 

When I saw American Sniper at the theater in early 2015, I left scratching some limb long ago removed... they say soldiers who have had an arm or leg amputated will still feel a scratch on the long removed appendage years later. 

The late American Sniper claimed he killed more than 30 people in post-Katrina, as he tried to restore law and order to a city overwhelmed by African-levels of violence

Patriotism. 

Love of country. 

I wanted, desperately, to believe in the same country as I just saw on the big screen; where Bradley Cooper so powerfully depicted Kyle as a larger than life hero, the embodiment of the American Dream. 

But we live in the American Nightmare: the metamorphoses of the American Dream into something our Founding Fathers could never have envisioned coming to fruition. 

However, one claim of Kyle's has always struck me as either an undeniable falsehood or one brimming with more truth than most people will ever want to contemplate: that he was in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and that he personally sniped more than 30 people.  

Tragically, American Sniper left out any reference to Kyle's claim he went to New Orleans in 2005 and shot more than 30 people (a belief many people claim is preposterous). 

But any person still believing the American Dream is only in hibernation, waiting for the right moment to be reborn with the ferocity of Andrew Jackson's temper, can only hope Kyle's boast was based on some truth. 

For it's well known the truth of what actually happened during the black lawlessness in Post-Katrina New Orleans has been sanitized for mass consumption. Something horrible happened in 2005 New Orleans, which bubbles up continuously in the news even in 2015. 

And though the legacy of Kyle will be questioned by those pushing the narrative only further enveloping the country in the American Nightmare, something beautiful bubbles to the surface when contemplating what he might have done in 2005 New Orleans. [In the Crosshairs: Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper, tried to help a troubled veteran. The result was tragic., The New Yorker, 6-3-2013]:

Not long after the radio-show appearance, Kyle was contacted by Brandon Webb, a veteran who had served with him on SEAL Team Three. Webb, now the editor of SOFREP, a Web site covering special-operations forces, invited Kyle and another former SEAL to participate in a taped discussion about life as a special operator. Webb asked Pat Kilbane, an actor, to moderate the discussion. Kyle met them at a bar in San Diego to tape the program. 

The session went well. Kilbane told me that he was struck by Kyle’s “aura,” noting that whenever “he walked in the room the dynamic would change, the energy in the room would shift.” Afterward, a larger group went out for dinner, closed the hotel bar, and hung out in Kyle’s suite, drinking until late. The SEALs began telling stories, and Kyle offered a shocking one. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, he said, the law-and-order situation was dire. He and another sniper travelled to New Orleans, set up on top of the Superdome, and proceeded to shoot dozens of armed residents who were contributing to the chaos. Three people shared with me varied recollections of that evening: the first said that Kyle claimed to have shot thirty men on his own; according to the second, the story was that Kyle and the other sniper had shot thirty men between them; the third said that she couldn’t recall specific details. 

Had Kyle gone to New Orleans with a gun? Rumors of snipers—both police officers and criminal gunmen—circulated in the weeks after the storm. Since then, they have been largely discredited. A spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, told me, “To the best of anyone’s knowledge at SOCOM, there were no West Coast SEALs deployed to Katrina.” When I related this account to one of Kyle’s officers, he replied, sardonically, “I never heard that story.” The SEAL with extensive experience in special-mission units wondered how dozens of people could be shot by high-velocity rifles and just disappear; Kyle’s version of events, he said, “defies the imagination.” (In April, Webb published an article on SOFREP about the incident, but took it down after concluding that Kyle’s account was dubious.)

In Ray Nagin's book (the disgraced - jailed - mayor of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina), he writes of a coup attempt that was thwarted at the SuperDome. Much of what actually happened in the absence of white civilization in post-Katrina New Orleans is either classified by the United States Military (or in heavily redacted Blackwater documents), with the corporate media stepping in to obscure the facts as nothing more than unconfirmed rumors or legends born in the lawless atmosphere of late August New Orleans.

But in Kyle's claim of trying to restore order in New Orleans rests the type of man who helped birth a civilization on the North American continent ultimately putting a man on the moon.

And in this claim, however incredulous it may seem, resides a pulse for the American Dream.

For something undeniably shocking occurred in New Orleans in 2005 during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and there's something incredibly satisfying in believing the American Sniper was deployed there to restore law and order.