Word: uniting
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...Several years ago, a reporter named Gregory Vistica, who worked for Newsweek at the time, got wind of a big story. A former commander had heard from a troubled SEAL that his unit, led by the young Kerrey, had been involved in a Vietnam raid that went horribly wrong. Vistica pursued the tale until he turned up the Navy's dusty "after action" reports on the events of Feb. 25, 1969, in the isolated peasant village of Thanh Phong. Late in 1998, when Kerrey was contemplating a second run for the presidency, the reporter put those 30-year-old documents...
...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...
...Kerrey recalls it, the 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...
...finding, I don't know, 14 or so, women and children who were dead," he says in the Times Magazine article. He remembers finding the dead bodies clustered together, though he insists his men began firing from 90 m away, shooting as they advanced on the hooches. When the unit spotted several people running away, they shot them too. "It's come back to haunt me about every other day," Kerrey told TIME. "If you feel that shame, it's very hard to talk about...
...unit was in the area and responded quickly to the building," said HUPD spokesperson Peggy A. McNamara...