----- Original Message ----- From: Downwithcapitalism <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 2:15 AM Subject: [downwithcapitalism] FW: Black Book of Capitalism (con't.) Reuters. 25 April 2001 07:22 PM ET. Ex-Senator Kerrey Admits Role in Vietnam Massacre. NEW YORK Former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey has admitted that a Navy Seal combat mission that he led during the Vietnam War and for which he was awarded the Bronze Star was responsible for the shooting deaths of more than 20 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. The incident, in a hamlet in the Mekong Delta, came to light on Wednesday as a result of a joint investigation by The New York Times Magazine and CBS News' "60 Minutes II" and was confirmed by Kerrey himself in newspaper interviews and in a speech last week. "I went out on a mission, and after it was over, I was so ashamed I wanted to die," Kerrey, who is seen as a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2004 and who ran unsuccessfully for the office in 1992, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. "This is killing me. I'm tired of people describing me as a hero and holding this inside," he said. In an interview on "60 Minutes II" set to air next Tuesday, Kerrey, 52, said that "to describe it as an atrocity, I would say, is pretty close to being right, because that's how it felt, and that's why I feel guilt and shame for it." The former Nebraska governor and two-term senator told CBS that the men in the squadron did not know they were killing unarmed civilians. But a surviving Vietnamese witness and a former squad member both contradicted that statement, with the ex-soldier telling CBS "we herded them all together in a group" and "lined them up and opened fire" from very close range. In various interviews, Kerrey has, in effect, both denied the allegations by Gerhard Klann -- one of the seven SEALs in Kerrey's unit in Thang Phong, where the killings took place in February 1969 -- and refused to do so. The Journal quoted him as saying: "It did not happen that way. ... There are seven guys with seven different versions." But in his CBS interview, he said: "Gerhard I will not contradict. ... If that's his view, I don't contradict it. It's not my memory of it." The version he gave ROTC students in Lexington, Virginia, last week was that the squad entered Viet Cong territory on a moonless night and was fired on. After returning fire, "we found that we had killed only women, children and older men," he said. Klann said the SEALs intentionally killed the civilians because they did not think they could get away from the village safety and did so on Kerrey's orders. Kerrey told CBS, "Our belief is that they could break free and we could be at risk," which would "compromise the mission." "We end up being dead," he added. The witness interviewed by CBS, Pham Tri Lanh, said that two elderly women who were kneeling were shot and "fell forward and they rolled over, and then they ordered everybody out from the bunker, and they lined them up and they shot all of them from behind." Of her account, Kerrey told CBS: "The eyewitness is, at the very least, sympathetic to the Viet Cong. At the absolute very least." After the killings, the squad's commander reported that the unit had killed 21 Viet Cong, and Kerrey was awarded the Bronze Star. SPAM TO FOLLOW Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
