From The New York Times - Up to 62 television stations owned or managed by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group - many of them in swing states - will show a documentary highly critical of Senator John Kerry’s antiwar activities 30 years ago within the next two weeks, Sinclair officials said yesterday.

Those officials said the documentary would pre-empt regular night programming, including prime time, on its stations, which include affiliates for all six of the major broadcast networks in the swing states of Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Called “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” the documentary features Vietnam veterans who say their Vietnamese captors used Mr. Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony, in which he recounted stories of American atrocities, prolonging their torture and betraying and demoralizing them…

A group of Democratic senators… readied a letter calling for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the move, arguing that the documentary was not news but a prolonged political advertisement from Mr. Bush and, as such, violated fairness rules.

Mark Hyman, Sinclair’s vice president for corporate relations, who doubles as a conservative commentator on its news stations, said the film would be shown because Sinclair deemed it newsworthy.

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INT. SENATE CHAMBER - DAY

[We see the now-iconic footage of young John Kerry in 1971, sitting before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testifying.]

KERRY: We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

[PULL BACK to reveal….]

EXT. US ARMY CAMP IN A FIELD IN VIETNAM - DAY

[We pull back to see several soldiers crouching under a tent, watching John Kerry on a small television set hooked up to a Jeep’s battery. Mortar shells explode around them from time to time.]

KERRY (on TV): …for a mistake?

PVT. MULRONEY: Geez, did you hear that?

PVT. JACKSON: Damn!

CPL. BODLE: It’s unbelievable. For the first time, now, in April of 1971, I’m beginning to wonder about whether the US war in Vietnam has been entirely successful.

PVT. MULRONEY: Me too. I mean, sure, there have been setbacks, like the failed invasions of Cambodia and Laos, and the 9,000 casualties we suffered before our pullback from the latter two months ago…

CPL. BODLE: … and the tens of thousands of us who’ve died, the fact that President Nixon won on a platform vowing to end this war, the fact that Henry Kissinger has already conceded defeat in his peace negotiations, the visible withdrawal of American troops that is happening every day and will reduce troop levels to zero within two years…

PVT. JACKSON: Cripes, guys!

PVT. MULRONEY: … mass stateside protests by civilians and veterans, including the “Moratorium” protest at home two years ago in which millions of American stayed home from work to protest the war, and the emerging news about government deception… Still, this testimony from this Kerry guy makes me think, maybe we’re not winning.

[Pause]

PVT. JACKSON: Dang.

PVT. MULRONEY: My morale has just sunk enormously.

CPL. BODLE: Mine too.

PVT. JACKSON: Damn.

[CUT TO:]

INT. NORTH VIETNAMESE PRISON FACILITY - DAY

[Several North Vietnamese military men sit at a guard station, drinking tea. In the corner of the room is a TV set.]

PVT. THO: Should we begin torturing the prisoners, Captain Nyuk?

CPT. NYUK: Torture? I shouldn’t think so, why?

PVT. THO: No reason. I mean, even with the ten years of horrific combat with the United States, the deaths of more than one million of us, the 100,000 peasants that were killed in the bombing of Cambodia, the CIA’s assassinations of an estimated 20,000 suspected guerillas…

PVT. THUAN: Egad.

CPT. NYUK: …the killing of 400,000 is Laos which has made one fourth of the population into refugees, the use of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on our lands, the highly-publicized My Lai Massacre of 1968 in which 500 villagers, mostly women and children, were killed…

PVT. THUAN: Yoinks.

PVT. THO: … and the growing list of atrocities that has been reported both here and in the US for the past three or four years, still, I don’t see any real reason to get all snippy with our honored guests.

CPT. NYUK: Me nether. Let’s let the prisoners outside for some tetherball, what say you? …wait -

[They look at the TV screen, on which John Kerry is testifying.]

KERRY: … How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?…

PVT. THUAN: Geez, guys.

[They sit silently, listening to the testimony.]

PVT. THUAN: Jinkies.

CPT. NYUK: That does it. Let’s torture the bastards!

PVT. THO: I’m with you!

PVT. THUAN: Tarnation!