Word: bobbed
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...More than 20 years later and running for President, Kerrey talked about that decision. "I accepted on behalf of other people that didn't get it," he said. "I'm very uncomfortable with the introduction, 'Here's Bob Kerrey, an American hero...
...They all knew it was ridiculous, Ambrose told Karen Tumulty, then with the Los Angeles Times, in 1992. "Bob wanted to turn the medal down ... It was just another night out," he said. "We just got hit." Kerrey and the others believed the "honor" was politically motivated: Nixon's unpopular war needed a few more heroes. Kerrey's buddies told him to accept the medal for the sake of all those who had fought and lost more than he had. Kerrey's sister Jessie Rasmussen says he was still struggling with a decision as the family gathered in Washington...
...what Kerrey's Raiders did that night in Thanh Phong can be cathartic. To condemn it is something else, requiring a clarity that was almost never available to young men shooting in the dark. It is a clarity our nation likewise never had at the time. When we judge Bob Kerrey, we judge our nation as well...
...grenade that I had dropped that blew me up. (Cleland lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam.) And then a year and a half ago, I found out it was the guy getting off the helicopter behind me who dropped the grenade. I consider what happened to Bob to be a freak accident of war, and he has had to live with that just as I have had to live with what happened...
...where people won't condemn you. I created such a place because so many veterans came back from Vietnam who had these kinds of problems. I created the Vet Center program. There were 15 centers in 1980; now there are about 200. So there are hundreds of thousands of Bob Kerreys out there just from Vietnam, not to mention Desert Storm or Somalia. Don't blame them for fighting for their lives...