Vietnam accuses former senator of crimes in village raid

HANOI, Vietnam -- Vietnam accused former Sen. Bob Kerrey of crimes during the dVietnam War, saying Friday that families of villagers killed by his Navy team experienced "incomparable suffering and losses."

It was the first time Vietnam has publicly accused Kerrey of criminal activity. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh made the accusation in reaction to a revised account of the raid in Kerrey's new memoir. Thanh did not specify what crimes Vietnam believed Kerrey had committed.

"Whatever Mr. Kerrey says cannot change the truth. Mr. Kerrey himself has admitted that he was ashamed of the crimes he committed," she said.

On Friday, Kerrey said he was disappointed by the government's comments, saying officials there have long blamed Americans for war-time atrocities.

"I pointed out then, and I'm pointing out now, both sides did a lot of damage in the Vietnam war," he said, adding the North Vietnamese used terror as one of their tools.

"You gotta get beyond it," he said at a Washington bookstore where he was doing a reading. "I'm quite certain the majority of people in Vietnam want to go on with their lives."

The incident, which Kerrey first acknowledged last year, put the former senator at the center of a national discussion about U.S. conduct during the war.

Kerrey said then that about 13 civilians were killed "by mistake" after his SEAL team was fired on and returned fire during the raid on Thanh Phong village on Feb. 25, 1969. He said he did not know of the civilian casualties until the shooting stopped.

But in his new memoir, "When I Was a Young Man," Kerrey writes that he was aware that women and children had begun to gather as his squad searched the village for enemy Viet Cong.

Shortly thereafter, Kerrey says his men were fired upon from the direction of the women and children. The Americans fired back.