Iraq veteran sues Michael Moore

A veteran of the war in Iraq is suing filmmaker Michael Moore for using footage of him in Fahrenheit 9/11.

Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, claims that Moore misused footage of him lying in a hospital bed without his arms to portray him "in a false light" and as "disagreeing with the president about the war effort and as disagreeing with the war effort itself."

"It was kind of almost like the enemy was using me for propaganda. What soldier wants to be involved in that?" Sgt. Damon told CBS's local television news. "I didn't lose my arms over there to come back and be used as ammunition against my commander-in-chief."

In a suit that also names Miramax Films Corp and several other film companies, Sgt Damon says Moore never sought his consent for using segments of an NBC Nightly News interview with Sgt. Damon while he was hospitalised.

The film shows the soldier lying on a hospital gurney at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Maryland, saying he feels like he has hands that were being "crushed in a vice." He adds: "But they (pain-killers) do a lot to help it," he said. "And they take a lot of the edge off of it."

NBC had originally used the clip for a story about medical treatment being received by veterans.

In Moore's film the footage of Damon follows a statement by Democratic Republican Jim McDermott of Washington, who says of the Bush administration: "You know they say they're not leaving any veterans behind, but they're leaving all kinds of veterans behind."

"The work creates a substantially fictionalised and falsified implication as a wounded serviceman who was left behind," the complaint said.