Long considered a possible Democratic candidate, Kerrey this week declared he will not run. After Vietnam, Kerrey went on to a long and honorable record of public service, and has worked to heal relations between the United States and Vietnam. A member of his U.S. Navy Seals combat team says Kerrey ordered villagers rounded up and killed. Initial reports from surviving villagers describe American soldiers going from bunker to bunker, shooting those inside. Other accounts, on both sides, are likely to emerge as correspondents interview survivors in the remote delta village and other team members recount their memories of the incident.
Civilian casualties are undisputed.
Log entries made a few days after the incident note civilian casualties, backing Kerrey's contention that he reported them. Kerrey himself concedes the bodies were found clumped together in the middle of the tiny village, not a likely combat scenario. Kerrey, too, has become a victim of that horrible night. Kerrey, who won a Medal of Honor for heroism in action a month later and lost part of a leg in Vietnam, was yet another soldier trying to do his duty in a morally impossible situation. Nevertheless, military officials ought to investigate what happened that night in the delta, as difficult as that might be more than three decades later.