Ex-talk show host doesn't hold back on anti-war film

America's TV talk show pioneer Phil Donahue thinks talk can be important, but sometimes not nearly as important as talking back.

"We think if we love America, all we've got to do is say that," the 72-year-old media icon said. "I love my kids, too. But sometimes I disagree with them and I say so. That's what I ought to be able to do as a citizen."

So, Donahue and filmmaker Ellen Spiro co-directed a documentary titled "Body of War," a slap of Mennen Skin Bracer for the national conscience. It introduces us to Tomas Young, who enlists in the military to fight terrorists in Afghanistan after the Twin Towers disaster. Instead, he winds up invading Iraq where a bullet hits his spine, paralyzing most of his body.

"I didn't know who he was when I met him at Walter Reed (Hospital)," Donahue said from his New York office. "I realized he is a warrior who has become an anti-war warrior."

"Body of War" follows Young's evolution as a vet against the Iraq war.

"We wanted to show the harm in harm's way, this euphemism we use," Donahue said. "He agreed that this is a terribly sanitized war in an un-American way. If you send a nation to war, you have a responsibility to show the sacrifices people are making."

In a parallel narrative, the movie also reveals through congressional recordings how easily the White House convinced both Republicans and Democrats on the Hill to give power to President Bush to declare war.

"This Congress did not declare war, which is what the Constitution demands," Donahue said. "This Congress gave permission to the president to go to war, if he thinks he has to. This puts the onus on the president and off the Congress who have the obligation to vote up or down on the question of war, but don't want the job!"

An unabashed, card-carrying liberal, Donahue marveled at the brilliance of the Bush administration's tactics and strategies.

"They had all the shout shows. They had every major metropolitan newspaper. They had the generals on all the cable channels coming from Rumsfeld's office directly to TV to mouth the talking points of the Pentagon while Congress was mouthing the talking points of the White House. This was brilliantly executed!"

In "Body of War," Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska proclaims, "History will show that the nations that stopped Saddam Hussein saved the world!"

"This is a grown man responding to the politics of fear, which was so brilliantly executed by the White House," Donahue said.

As for directing his first movie, the former talk show host said he felt grateful it all came together.

"This is a movie. We don't have a narrator. There's no archival footage. Nothing goes boom! in our film. I'm not in the film," he said. "We figured that ought to sell a couple of extra tickets."

Donahue will answer questions after the Chicago opening of "Body of War" at 7:15 p.m. today at the Century Centre, 2828 N. Clark St., Chicago. He'll also introduce the second showing at 9 p.m.