Word: conge
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...citation that accompanied the Bronze Star, Kerrey is lauded for his unit's "heroic achievement" in killing 21 Viet Cong, burning two hooches, or peasant huts, and capturing two enemy weapons. Kerrey never mentioned the medal in his official bio. As he acknowledged last week, there was nothing heroic about what really happened...
...this year, at a small speech to officer-training candidates at Virginia Military Institute, toward the end of his discourse about moral justifications of war, Kerrey spoke about the night in 1969 when he led six Navy SEALs on an operation to take out a suspected Viet Cong official. "We used lethal procedures when there was doubt," he said. "When we received fire, we returned fire. But when the firing stopped, we found that we had killed only women, children and older men. It was not a military victory; it was a tragedy, and I had ordered...
...nighttime assault unfolded amid the confusion endemic to Vietnam. In-country for just a month, the 25-year-old lieutenant had charge of a squad of Elite Navy SEALs (short for Sea, Air and Land unit) trained to emerge from the dark, kidnap or kill local Viet Cong leaders, then melt back into the jungle. This night their target was a village secretary reportedly holding a party meeting in Thanh Phong. The straggle of hooches lay deep in the Mekong Delta "free-fire zone," where innocent civilians had?officially, at least?been cleared out, and everyone left was deemed...
...Klann said he heard no incoming fire as the squad entered Thanh Phong. He said that when they failed to find the Viet Cong official, Kerrey ordered the SEALs to round up the unarmed women and children in the hooches. Then, Klann said, "an order was given" to shoot them. "We lined up, and we opened fire." A baby was the last one alive, Klann told the Times Magazine. "There were blood and guts splattering everywhere." 60 Minutes II backs up Klann's version with the words of Pham Thi Lanh, identified as the wife of a Viet Cong fighter...
...given or received an order to deliberately shoot civilians. Kerrey himself has insisted over and over that while the massacre was an "atrocity," it had been accidental. "As guilty and awful as I felt," he told TIME, "I have every reason to believe that there were Viet Cong in that village that night. We did not go there with the intention of killing anybody that was innocent. I was at risk of having dead men in my squad if we didn't become quite violent...