Former Marine sues over PTSD from training

Former Marine sues over PTSD from training
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Oct 25, 2007 13:33:56 EDT

SAN DIEGO — Jesse Klingler joined the Marine Corps to serve his country and fight the bad guys.

But his enlistment as a rifleman was cut short after he was wounded in a super-realistic 2004 training exercise at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar’s Camp Elliott, during which he was taken hostage, tied and bound. Then, a hired actor — playing the role of an insurgent — pointed a very real AK47 assault rifle near then-Pfc. Klingler’s thigh and fired the hot gases from two blank rounds into his flesh.

Klingler, now 21 and medically discharged from the Corps, said he suffers post-traumatic stress from the incident and constant pain that he fears will prohibit him from a normal working life.

“I wanted to my country and be in the infantry. I wanted to fight on the ground and kick in the door,” he said, adding that his dream “was stolen from me.” In a civil suit filed in San Diego Superior Court, Klingler places the blame on the actor, Rocky “Ali” Mohsen, and the local training and production companies contracted by the Marine Corps to assist with urban combat training.

But to Strategic Operations Inc., Klingler is an opportunist and a malingerer: a young man with a slight wound who exaggerated his injury, found a way out of the service and now is suing the contractor for several million dollars.

“It was an accident. It shouldn’t have happened,” said Michael I. Neil, a San Diego attorney representing Strategic Operations and Stu Segall, a Hollywood producer whose production company owns the movie studio lot that houses the tactical training.


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2007/10/marine_ptsdsuit_071025/



uhc comment: Meet Strategic Operations Inc.

War’s reality show

The players appear to be ex-military types --> http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pwwi/is_200408/ai_n8556732

They spending about $80,000 a year on lobbying --> http://www.opensecrets.org/lobbyists/clientsum.asp?txtname=Strategic+Operations+Inc&year=2006

It appears bidness is picking up.

http://www.governmentcontractswon.com/department/defense/strategic_operations_inc_127626724.asp?yr=06

Govt Contracts (Defense) - Count/$ Dollar Amount
2006 4/$3,703,001
2005 4/$3,665,485
2004 3/$482,077