'They Died for Nothing?' 'Lone Survivor' Marcus Luttrell Takes on CNN's Jake Tapper in Tense Interview

Leah Barkoukis | January 11, 2014 4:58 PM

Former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell has been making the rounds promoting the movie “Lone Survivor,” a personal account of the failed SEAL Team 10 mission to capture or kill a notorious Taliban leader in Afghanistan. During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, however, things got pretty tense. Check out the clip below and see if you think Tapper was out of line or if the exchange simply reflects the difference between how a civilian feels when watching the film versus how a soldier feels, as Tapper suggests.

Transcript via BizPac Review:

“One of the emotions I felt while watching was, first of all, the hopelessness of the situation, how horrific it was,” Tapper said in starting off the interview. “And I was torn about the message of the film in the same way that I think I am about the war in Afghanistan itself. I don’t want any more senseless American death.” […]

“I don’t know what part of the film you were watching, but hopelessness never really came into it,” Luttrell replied. “Where did you see that? We never felt like we were hopelessly lost or anything like that. We never gave up. We never felt like we were losing until we were actually dead.”

Tapper tried to explain, but he was clearly out of his league.

“It seemed senseless,” the CNN host responded. “I don’t mean to disrespect in any way, but it seemed senseless — all of these wonderful people who were killed for an op that went wrong.”

Irritated, Luttrell gave Tapper a little education on military combat.

“We spend our whole lives training to defending this country,and then we were sent over there by this country,” Luttrell said. “So you’re telling me because we were over there doing what we were told by our country, that it was senseless? And my guys, what? They died for nothing?”

Backtracking, Tapper said, “No.”

“That’s what you said,” Luttrell fired back. “So, let me just say, it went bad for us over there, but that was our job. That’s what we did. We didn’t complain about it.”