Michael Moore: 'Haters' have it all wrong

The great American Sniper debate continues.

Filmmaker Michael Moore is firing back at haters who jumped on him for remarks he made about American Sniper — and snipers in general, which caused "the ruckus," as he calls it, of the past week.

Moore tweeted about his uncle who was killed in World War II by a sniper, which taught him to despise snipers. He called them cowards.

Now, in a new lengthy Facebook post, Moore says that "right-wing" has twisted his tweet into "Michael Moore hates the troops."

But he doesn't hate troops, he says.

He details his support for military servicemen and women who spent time in Iraq, saying that the real "'haters' of our brave young men and women would recklessly send them into harm's way for something that had absolutely nothing to do with defending the United States of America."

He lays out a long list of things he has done to support the troops, including instituting an affirmation action program to hire vets for his films, movie theaters and film festivals, offering free admittance at his theaters to all active duty military and their families, and regularly raising money for veterans, military families and wounded warriors.

Moore notes that he is currently showing American Sniper at his theater in Manistee, Mich.

"Not because I like it, but because, unlike the other side, I'm not a censor. I trust smart people and people of good heart will know what to do. You can't have a conversation about what Clint Eastwood is up to if you haven't seen what it is he's up to. And regardless where u are on the political spectrum, you'll see that every character in Clint's film comes out dead or permanently damaged. This ain't no John Wayne rah-rah pablum. Eastwood made maybe the greatest western ever - Unforgiven - but now it's sad seeing him talking to an empty chair on a stage or making an Iraq movie that Rolling Stone this week called, 'too dumb to bother criticizing.'"

He's referring to a review by Matt Taibbi, who called American Sniper a "simple, well-lit little fairy tale with the nutritional value of a fortune cookie..."

In the end, Moore says he is "most proud" of "sticking my neck out 12 years ago to become a leading opponent to Bush and the war. I tried to save more lives than a sniper ever could hope to -- by preventing us from going to war in the first place. Well, I failed at that. But I've done everything else humanly possible to try and make it up to those troops when they return home -- that is, the ones lucky enough to return home."

In the end, Clint Eastwood should probably thank Michael Moore for keeping up the chatter about the film. It dominated the box office for the second weekend in a row, with $64.4 million, according to studio estimates.