As retired Army Col. David Hackworth noted in a recent TV interview, speaking from years of combat experience that included Vietnam, those seven SEALs would be expected to remember seven different versions of their terrible encounter. Violent confrontations do that to the human mind. But the larger issue now, with the collage of differing memories and the fog of 32 years' passage, is whether Kerrey should be held to account for what may have been a war crime. I think not. The record is incomplete.
Facts are in dispute.
Disparate memories cannot reconcile those divergent facts. Thanh Phong was a tragedy. Vietnam was a tragedy. War is a tragedy. Painfully, tragedies often reveal more questions than answers - for individuals and for nations.