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THE HORROR THAT WILL NEVER GO AWAY
DAVID H. HACKWORTH

Ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey's admission about a 1969 Vietnam atrocity might have 
generated a media feeding frenzy, but it's not news to me.

Nine years ago at Newsweek, I got a call from a man who claimed he was a 
"former SEAL" and whispered last week's headline news. But after some picking 
and shoveling, editor Maynard Parker and I walked away. Years later, another 
Newsweek reporter, Gregory Vistica, came up with the same story, and it, too, 
was spiked.

We never ran with my story because:

* The allegation couldn't be backed up. Participants had conflicting recall, 
common among warriors even immediately after a fight and especially decades 
later. No big surprise. Most eyewitnesses to a traumatic experience -- 
battle-related or civilian -- remember it differently.

* The whisperer couldn't explain why, since military law was on his side, he 
didn't stop the massacre. You know, "Lt. Kerrey, cease/desist or I'll shoot 
you." Or why he didn't immediately report the "war crime" per Navy regs. Or 
why he then sat on it for so many years.

Another reason was based on my almost five years in Vietnam, where, during 
that shameful war, there were thousands of such atrocities. My parachute 
battalion's first big "kill" in 1965 was a night ambush at An Khe that 
destroyed a tribal family who hadn't gotten the word about the curfew. The 
draftee unit I skippered in 1969 -- as I've recently discovered while doing 
interviews for a new book -- had at least a dozen such horrors. Most were 
reported at the time as "enemy killed." Thirty-two years later, the 
participants say: It was the easy way out; we couldn't handle the shame; the 
command was constantly pushing the body-count figure.

Everywhere our young men fought in Vietnam, where there were civilians, there 
was carnage. Especially in the Mekong Delta -- where Kerrey's commandos were 
hunting and being hunted by an armed enemy who was everywhere.

Most of us have heard of William Calley's My Lai massacre, where hundreds of 
noncombatants were cut down in a bloodbath led by a madman. But ask anyone 
who fought in the Delta, where 35 percent of Vietnam's population lived, if 
civilians got caught in the middle of the cross fire -- and the answer has to 
be yes.

Few innocents were killed on purpose. But it was a war with no front, and few 
of the enemy in the Delta wore uniforms or fought by the rules of war. Also, 
many women, children and old men were "freedom fighters" not unlike Americans 
during our War of Independence.

My division in the Delta, the 9th, reported killing more than 20,000 Viet 
Cong in 1968 and 1969, yet less than 2,000 weapons were found on the "enemy" 
dead. How much of the "body count" consisted of civilians? 

John Paul Vann told me in April 1969 when he was in charge of pacification in 
the Delta that "at least 30 percent were noncombatants" and that he'd spoken 
to President Nixon about having the 9th immediately pulled out of the Delta. 
A month later, the division got its marching orders.

Gen. Julian Ewell, who commanded the 9th, never ordered his soldiers to kill 
civilians. Nor did I. Nor, in my judgment, did Bob Kerrey. Nor did most of 
the scared young men -- lying out in the mud night after night thinking every 
sound was an enemy who'd soon take their lives -- purposely kill civilians.   

The Vietnam War was a 25-year running sore in which more than 5 million 
Southeast Asians died, nearly half a million Americans bled and millions of 
others still bear the pain and the shame and the scars.  

This week, Vistica finally presents his sensational story of events long ago 
in print, followed by Dan Rather on television. But neither was on that op; 
neither has been a combat grunt. Vistica never served; Rather did have a go 
at becoming a Marine but never completed boot camp. As far as I'm concerned, 
neither is qualified to pass judgment on soldiers or sailors.  

Matter of fact, neither of these frequent military bashers is fit to shine 
Kerrey's one jungle boot -- the other having been left behind in Vietnam with 
his foot in it while he bravely answered his country's call.
***
(c) 2001 David H. Hackworth
Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc.

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