Veteran US journalist Ted Koppel devoted his Nightline program on Friday to broadcasting the names and photographs of 721 US soldiers killed in Iraq, sparking outrage from conservatives who called it antiwar propaganda.
But Koppel said the ABC show, extended to 40 minutes from its normal half-hour to accommodate all the names, was a politically neutral way of honoring those who had died.
"Our goal tonight was to elevate the fallen above the politics and the daily journalism," he said at the end of the program. "The reading of those 721 names was neither intended to provoke opposition to the war nor as an endorsement."
Koppel said he was not opposed to the war in Iraq, launched in March last year to oust former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
"I am opposed to sustaining the illusion that war can be waged by the sacrifice of a few without burdening the rest of us in any way. I oppose the notion that to be at war is to forfeit the right to question, criticize or debate our leaders' policies," he said.
The show was broadcast on the eve of the anniversary of Bush's declaration from the deck of an aircraft carrier that major combat in Iraq was over.
Since then a guerrilla war waged by a range of anti-US groups has intensified and 134 Americans were killed last month alone -- the bloodiest month for US forces since the war began.
The program was inspired by a June 1969 edition of Life magazine that carried the names and pictures of all the US soldiers killed in a single week in the Vietnam War.
That issue of the magazine was credited with fueling public sentiment against the war in Vietnam and conservative commentators accused Koppel of trying to encourage similar opposition to the war in Iraq.
A media company whose executives have been strong supporters of US President George W. Bush, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, barred its ABC-affiliated stations from airing the Nightline broadcast, calling it a political statement that failed to give all sides of the story.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and Vietnam veteran, condemned Sinclair's decision "to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war's terrible costs." He called it a "gross disservice to the public" and the US armed forces.
"It is in short, sir, unpatriotic," McCain wrote in a letter to the company.
Sinclair president David Smith responded that ABC "has adopted a strategy employed by numerous antiwar demonstrators who wish to focus attention solely on the cost of war." He said Sinclair stations would replace Nightline with "a balanced report addressing both sides of this controversy."
Koppel rejected Sinclair's criticism. "We do context every day. Today was just one program when we decided we would honor the dead. Period," he said.
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