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http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/entertainment/movies/14709855.htm

Iraq veteran sues Moore over 9/11 film
DENISE LAVOIE
Associated Press

BOSTON - A veteran who lost both arms in the war in Iraq is suing 
filmmaker Michael Moore for $85 million, alleging that Moore used 
snippets of a television interview without his permission to falsely 
portray him as anti-war in "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Sgt. Peter Damon, a National Guardsman from Middleborough, is asking for 
damages because of "loss of reputation, emotional distress, 
embarrassment, and personal humiliation," according to the lawsuit filed 
in Suffolk Superior Court last week.

Damon, 33, claims that Moore never asked for his consent to use a clip 
from an interview Damon did with NBC's "Nightly News."

He lost his arms when a tire on a Black Hawk helicopter exploded while 
he and another reservist were servicing the aircraft on the ground. 
Another reservist was killed in the explosion.

In his interview with NBC, Damon was asked about a new painkiller the 
military was using on wounded veterans. He claims in his lawsuit that 
the way Moore used the film clip in "Fahrenheit 9/11" - Moore's scathing 
2004 documentary criticizing the Bush administration and the war in Iraq 
- makes him appear to "voice a complaint about the war effort" when he 
was actually complaining about "the excruciating type of pain" that 
comes with the injury he suffered.

In the movie, Damon is shown lying on a gurney, with his wounds 
bandaged. He says he feels likes he's "being crushed in a vise."

"But they (the painkillers) do a lot to help it," he says. "And they 
take a lot of the edge off of it."

Damon is shown shortly after U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., is 
speaking about the Bush administration and says, "You know, they say 
they're not leaving any veterans behind, but they're leaving all kinds 
of veterans behind."

Damon contends that Moore's positioning of the clip just after the 
congressman's comments makes him appear as if he feels like he was "left 
behind" by the Bush administration and the military.

In his lawsuit, Damon says he "agrees with and supports the President 
and the United States' war effort, and he was not left behind."

He said that, while at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center recovering 
from his wounds, he had surgery and physical therapy, learned to use 
prosthetics and live independently. He also said that Homes For Our 
Troops, a not-for-profit group, built him a house with handicapped 
accessibility.

"The work creates a substantially fictionalized and falsified 
implication as a wounded serviceman who was left behind when Plaintiff 
was not left behind but supported, financially and emotionally, by the 
active assistance of the President, the United States and his family, 
friends, acquaintances and community," Damon says in his lawsuit.

Moore did not immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday. A 
message was left for Moore at a personal number in New York and with 
HarperCollins, publisher of Moore's 2002 book, "Stupid White Men...And 
Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!"

A spokesman for Miramax Film Corp., also named as a defendant, did not 
immediately return a call.

Damon did not immediately respond to a request for an interview.

"It's upsetting to him because he's lived his life supportive of his 
government, he's been a patriot, he's been a soldier, and he's now being 
portrayed in a movie that is the antithesis of all of that," Damon's 
lawyer, Dennis Lynch, said.

Damon is seeking $75 million in damages for emotional distress and loss 
of reputation. His wife is suing for an additional $10 million in 
damages because of the mental distress caused to her husband, Lynch 
said.

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