October 19, 2004

Stolen Honor Airs Friday

Stolen Honor, the documentary focusing on the impact of John Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities on the Americans held as prisoners-of-war by the North Vietnamese communists, will air Friday night on two teevee stations . Today's Tennessean has a story today about the documentary, and people today who are protesting the broadcasting company's decision to air it.

Stolen Honor is a documentary produced by a journalist who has won both the Pulitzer prize and the Peabody Award, the top awards in print and broadcast journalism respectively - also is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, wounded three times. If you can't see it on tevee, you can watch it online here for $4.99 per view, or buy a copy of it on video. The Kerry campaign has tried to intimidate Sinclair Broadcasting to cancel its airing.

In a spectacular display of ignorance about America's First Amendment right of freedom of speech, one organizer of the protest against the local airing of the documentary tells The Tennessean, "''We shouldn't be able to use the public airwaves as tools of propaganda, and I'm outraged by this. This is a clear violation of campaign laws.''

Um, no it isn't. And CBS uses the public airwaves as a tool of propaganda all the time.

The Tennessean also quotes Bob Tuke, chairman of the Kerry-Edwards campaign, in opposition to the documentary. Tuke, also a Vietnam veteran

said he believed that Kerry's testimony galvanized anti-war efforts nationwide that eventually helped end the war. ''I was in a rice paddy leading a group of Marines when he was testifying before Congress, and my view is he probably saved the lives of one or more of my Marines,'' Tuke said. ''All Kerry was doing was reporting what other veterans had told him. He wasn't accusing them of dishonor. And I'm sorry, I just don't buy the suggestion that Kerry's activity caused harm to our POWs.''

That's what Stolen Honor does:

James Warner, held for over five years, recalls being made to stand motionless inside a small chalked circle on the floor. He lasted for 97 hours, during which he had a view of the camp's front gate. He saw the author Mary McCarthy and Tom Hayden enter the camp. His mother attended the Winter Soldier hearings and issued a statement criticizing the war, which his captors shared with him along with statements by John Kerry. He explains that Kerry met with his mother and sister and thinks it was a "contemptible act" to take advantage of a "grieving old lady and manipulate her grief to promote your own political agenda." He adds, "He burned up his Band of Brothers membership card when he did that."

When John Kerry was the prized spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), there were 700 American POWs in Vietnam. Many of those involved in this documentary, funded by $200,000 in donations from Pennsylvania veterans, believe that antiwar activists encouraged their captors to hold out because the "war would be lost in the streets of America."