*UPDATE* Michael Moore Sued by Iraq War Vet

[Backstop]

'Somewhere' I read an interview with an American serviceman, who stated that Michael Moore misrepresented him in Moore's film.

I certainly hope Sgt. Peter Damon receives adequate compensation for Moore's underhanded tactics.

And I certainly hope Michael Moore...well...continues to gain weight.

YahooNews

Michael Moore Sued by Iraq War Vet

By Natalie Finn
Thu Jun 1, 2:30 PM ET

It seems as if the fallout caused by Fahrenheit 9/11 will never die down.
Backstop's note: That's right Michael Moore. We will NEVER forget you.

A Massachusetts national guardsman filed an $85 million lawsuit against Michael Moore in Suffolk Superior Court last week, accusing the filmmaker of distorting a TV interview to portray the soldier as anti-war in his scathing 2004 documentary about the Bush administration post-Sept. 11, 2001.

Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, has stated that Moore didn't have his permission to use pieces of the on-camera interview he gave in 2003 to an NBC Nightly News correspondent at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. Damon's appearance in Fahrenheit 9/11 resulted in a "loss of reputation, emotional distress, embarrassment, and personal humiliation" for him, court documents state.

Damon is suing for $75 million and his wife is seeking another $10 million for the "mental distress and anguish suffered by her spouse."

The lawsuit states that "[Fahrenheit 9/11] creates a substantially fictionalized and falsified implication of 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, a double amputee, lost both of his arms while stationed in Iraq when a tire on a Black Hawk Helicopter he was servicing exploded.

Another reservist was killed.

In Moore's film Damon is shown lying on a gurney, covered in bandages. He says he feels as if he's "being crushed in a vise," adding, "but [the painkillers] do a lot to help it. And they take a lot of the edge off of it."

The scene prior to Damon's features U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat from Washington state, saying, "You know, [those in the Bush administration] say they're not leaving any veterans behind, but they're leaving all kinds of veterans behind."

In his lawsuit, Damon has argued that the juxtaposition of those two scenes made it sound as if the military and the Bush administration had left him to grapple alone with pain or possibly even a drug addiction when, in reality, he "agrees with and supports the president and the United States' war effort and was not left behind."

NBC had been questioning Damon about the painkiller he was using, a new drug the military was distributing to wounded veterans.

"They took the clip because it was a gut-wrenching scene," Damon told Fox News Tuesday. "They sandwiched it in. [Moore] was using me as ammunition."

Miramax Films, NBC, and Lions Gate Entertainment are also named in the suit, according to Fox News.

The controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 was a smash hit for Moore and Miramax, winning the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and grossing more than $222 million worldwide.

The film, which focused pretty one-sidedly on the Bush administration's response to 9/11 (sorely lacking, according to Moore) and its instigation of the war in Iraq (inexcusable, Moore said) was passed over come Oscar time, however, partly because the director entered his production in the Best Picture category, rather than take a run at Best Documentary.

Damon told the New York Post that Moore couldn't have picked a worse guy to pin the charge of being anti-war on.

"I'm the most fortunate disabled guy," he said. "I was complaining about the pain I would've been having [if it weren't for the painkiller]."

Damon's lawyer, Dennis Lynch, also weighed in with the Associated Press.
"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 that," Lynch said.

Phone calls from the AP and Fox News to Moore and Miramax were not returned.

[American Patriot]

Good job on Sgt. Damon. Stick it to Moore and his Anti-Americanism.

Perhaps he (Moore) will get a taste of what it's like sitting in court as an Anti-American for once.

[Brian Baldwin]

Guess you could say the Sgt. is trying to get his pound of flesh from Moore. hehe

[Backstop]

Michael Moore, you are one sorry SOB.

Townhall.com

How does he sleep at night?

By Mike Gallagher

Jun 30, 2006

Do you think Michael Moore sleeps well at night? I’ve often wondered how the America-hating filmmaker could live with himself. After all, this is a guy who has made enormous sums of money by manipulating Columbine massacre victims and American soldiers into being pawns in his hateful “documentaries.”

But now that one of his victims has become a casualty of war, I’ve just got to believe he has a very, very difficult time getting eight hours of sleep a night. Surely the man has a sliver of a conscience and sees the face of Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar every waking hour of his life.

When Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11” first came out, I dreaded seeing it. Knowing what Moore does for a living, I knew his anti-war film would be a disgusting spectacle. If a man is capable of having a Columbine shooting victim get wheeled into a retail store to demand a refund for the bullets left in her body by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in order to stage a scene for “Bowling for Columbine”, he’d be capable of just about anything.

But I strongly believe that no one should criticize a book or a movie or a TV show without seeing it. It’s just not fair to rail against something without having the benefit of knowing the material.

So off to the movie theatre I went. Thankfully, I had a free pass, so I didn’t have to pay one dime that would help line Moore’s ample pockets.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” was even worse than I expected. It could reasonably be described as the mother lode of smear jobs against the American soldier. Moore undoubtedly spent hundreds of hours interviewing soldiers who are fighting in this war, but naturally, the only interviews he showed were servicemen talking about going out to kill Iraqis and even making fun of a dead enemy by poking him with a stick and calling him “Ali Baba.”

He also had a field day with a couple of military recruiters. In one scene, he showed Ray Plouhar trying to recruit young men in a shopping mall parking lot in Flint, Michigan. I’m sure Michael Moore really enjoyed showing Plouhar saying, “It’s better to get them when they’re in ones and twos and work on them that way.” Moore was obviously attempting to portray Ray as a buffoon who was so desperate for recruits that he would make that kind of comment.

Well, Ray Plouhar was no buffoon. He was a brave hero who had taken four years off from active duty to serve as a recruiter, and then went right back into battle, fighting for a cause he believed in. Plouhar was such an honorable young man that he donated one of his kidneys to his uncle.

And he sure didn’t appreciate the way Moore portrayed him in the film, nor did he approve of the movie’s content. Some said he would never have agreed to allow Moore to use him in the movie if he had known what Moore’s intentions were going to be. But then again, that’s what a propagandist like Michael Moore does. He distorts, deceives, manipulates and laughs all the way to the bank.

On Monday, June 26, 2006, Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar, 30, died of injuries he suffered while conducting combat operations in Iraq’s volatile Anbar province. His grieving father said, “I’m proud that my son wanted to protect the freedom of this country whether we all agree with the war or not.”

I’m sure his opinion of Michael Moore and the way he treated his son in “Fahrenheit 9/11” isn’t something that could be published in this column.

Now that Ray Plouhar has died, I wonder if there will be many Michael Moore-style filmmakers poking their cameras into Moore’s face and asking him how he feels. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear what Moore would say about Ray Plouhar now?

I’m guessing that despite his millionaire lifestyle (I once watched him climb aboard a huge, private jet in State College, Pennsylvania), he isn’t sleeping very well these days. I have enough faith in the human condition to believe that even Michael Moore feels ashamed of what he did to one of our heroes. I’ve got to believe that he tosses and turns on his silk sheets, feeling pretty terrible that his movie caused Ray Plouhar and his family such embarrassment. I think he must be absolutely miserable in realizing what a mean-spirited jerk he is.

But then again, I tend to be an optimist about such matters.

Mike Gallagher is a contributing editor at Townhall.com, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, and a contributor and guest host on the Fox News Channel. Gallagher's website is MikeOnline.com