Apr. 30 — At the end of one of the most deadly months since the military operation began in Iraq, ABCNEWS' Nightline will pay tribute to all the American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq by devoting the entire broadcast to reading their names and showing their photographs.

Using photographs and information drawn from the Army Times Publishing Company's online "Faces of Valor" database, Nightline will show a picture of each serviceman and woman in succession with their name, military branch, rank and age.

Expanded by 10 minutes from its usual half-hour, Nightline will include more than 500 killed in action in Iraq since March 19, 2003, as well as 200-plus non-combat deaths.

Nightline executive producer Leroy Sievers, said that the program is their "way of reminding our viewers -- whether they agree with the war or not -- that beyond the casualty numbers, these men and women are serving in Iraq in our names, and that those who have been killed have names and faces."

The program has sparked a war of words as critics claim the special 40-minute program is anti-war. While Nightline calls it a "tribute," Sinclair Broadcast Group, a Maryland-based media company whose holdings include 62 TV stations, is pre-empting Nightline on its eight ABC affiliates, including stations in Columbus, Ohio; St. Louis, Mo.; and Charleston, W.Va.

The company said today's program "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."

Nightline's anchor Ted Koppel, who will read the names of the fallen aloud, said "it's not implicitly anti-war" on ABC's Good Morning America today. "I think it's an appropriate thing to do."

"I'm not suggesting that people in this country don't know what's happening, but I think that periodically it is not unreasonable to remind everyone of who these young people are and what they look like," said Koppel.

Initially, due to time constaints of a 30-minute program, Nightline was only planning to read the names of the servicemen and women who were killed in combat.

But a father called in whose son was wounded in combat, decorated for bravery but was later killed coming back from the front lines when his truck flipped. He asked why his son was not worthy of being mentioned. After talking to him, the decision was made to extend the broadcast to include non-combat deaths.

"It hit us so hard when he said that that we went to the network and said, 'can you give us an extra 10 minutes?'" said Koppel.

The program, titled "The Fallen," will air Friday, April 30, at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC7.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Commentary:
Sinclair gives 98% of it's campaign contributions to republicans. That alone should tell you what this is really about. But I get a kick out of how shameless they are. They say Nightline is being political and anti-war by doing this show. Does that mean being pro-war is NOT political? The war-networks pushed Bush's war and WMD lies around the clock until over 70% of Americans believed them. Weren't they pushing the republican agenda? Were they telling the truth when they lied to us about Iraq having WMD?

Sinclair is pro-war and pro-republican....they say so themselves. And anything that interferes with their limited view of the truth must be censored.

How about this? Every time Bush says this war is about freedom and not his political career, the networks could put up a face of someone who died that day. That way no one will be suckered into voting for this politically motived war-monger.