Winter Soldier

A creature of habit, and a habitual creature, I'm back on a rhythm that makes me think 2am is 6pm. The house is quiet enough for sipping beer and turning my noodle inside-out for a while. Early this morning, while the dog snoozed on a pillow, the kid rustled in bed, and the wife slept off a late-autmn cold, I turned on the TV.

The programming selection, as usual, was poor. For a while, I found myself watching Justine Bateman and Juila Roberts in "Satisfaction" and wondering what programming genius thought it would be good to slip that one back in rotation. I watched it longer than I intended before realizing I had killed just enough brain cells to forget how old I turn on Monday.

Sundance was showing a film titled "Winter Soldier."

I'll admit, though this film was made before I was born and re-released last year, I'd never heard of it. In short, more than 100 Vietnam vets went to Detroit in 1971 to testify in front of TV cameras about atrocities during the war.

Watch it. If you find it at all compelling, be prepared to be called an idiot by anyone who opposes John Kerry. I've done little more research than wiki-ing the movie, but it's pretty clear the film's contents are hot enough to spark the kind of debate that results in moving exactly nowhere. Because the event was put on by anti-war activists, it was largely assumed that much of the testimony was false or exaggerated for effect.

I don't know. I never will know. But I do know this: It would be damned interesting to take 125 vets of Iraq and put them in front of a camera for a day.