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BITTER REAL-LIFE RESCUER: I WAS CAST ASIDE

One of the heroes at the heart of director Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” is blasting the two PA cops whose lives he saved – and the studio that produced the flick.

“Paramount made a movie about my rescue effort without asking for my input,” Marine Sgt. David Karnes, 48, told The Post.

Asked if he knew why, he said, “Ask the two cops” – Will Jimeno, played by Michael Peña, and John McLoughlin, played by Nicolas Cage. Then Karnes added, “I’ll just say two words: fame and fortune.”

Nearly a year after he shipped off to Iraq in the summer of 2004, “a relative e-mailed me Paramount’s press release announcing the film – which was news to me,” he said.

Karnes is annoyed that neither McLoughlin nor Jimeno had reached out to him earlier. “They knew where to find me,” he said.

When he tried to contact them before shipping out, “they shunned me,” he said.

“I’m not out there making a buck,” he said. “I’ve been focused on going after the terrorists.”

Karnes, who has not seen the film or talked to the two rescued cops since 2002, believes it to be “a web of lies about how the rescue unfolded.”

He called last week’s private screening for 9/11 families a “lovefest with Gov. Pataki” that he wanted no part of.

“There’s a huge story here about the truth behind the rescue – if and when I choose to tell it,” he said.

Michael Shamberg, the film’s producer, says the filmmakers reached out to Karnes before beginning production and have been in talk with his lawyers for more than a year.

“We would love to hear from him and hope he will take us up on our longstanding offer to meet and see the film,” he said.