Through his years in office as a senator from Nebraska, Bob Kerrey was one of the most decorated members of the Senate veterans of Vietnam. He was frequently referred to as a war hero in an age when war heroes of his generation were few and far between. Kerrey maintains that he never campaigned on his medals, and his official biography makes no mention of the Bronze Star he received for his February 25, 1969 raid on the Mekong Delta village of Thanh Phong.

While Kerrey also received a Congressional Medal of Honor a month later — for heroic fighting in which he received a crippling injury to his right leg dealt by a grenade explosion — he has always been reluctant to discuss what had occurred in Thanh Phong.

Last week, we all learned why, as Kerrey disclosed in a speech delivered at Virginia Military Institute that his bronze star was received for actions which had "haunted" him for 32 years. On the night that Kerrey led six members of the squad of Navy Seals into the Vietcong-held village of Thanh Phong, perhaps as many as 13 to 20, or even more, civilians — according to news reports based on interviews with Kerrey and others present - were killed by the his unit.

According to Kerrey, and five of the six other Seals who were with him, these people were killed accidentally, as the Americans attempted to return fire on enemy guerrillas. But according to Gerhard Klann, the other Seal in the squad, the deaths were not accidental. To cover his unit's rear, Klann told The New York Times Magazine, Kerrey ordered the execution of the civilians of the village.

After 32 years, Kerrey announced he wanted to go public with this incident, saying, "I have not been able to justify it militarily or morally."

Is this part of a healing process, or has Kerrey opened up new wounds? For many Americans who don't remember Vietnam directly, the story is a painful reminder of why this was a war Americans didn't want to fight. Kerrey describes a battle that was not only being fought against invaders, but against civilians in South Vietnamese "free-fire" zones who supported the Vietcong.

As Americans reacted to the Tet Offensive, young and inexperienced lieutenants like Kerrey were being dropped into enemy territory, with instructions to capture an enemy about whom they knew next to nothing. Whether Kerrey actually ordered an execution or his troops accidentally fired on villagers may be beside the point: the situation in Vietnam routinely demanded that the line between combatants and non-combatants be blurred —- that is, the war obliterated the traditional lines between women, children, and soldiers.

Kerrey, in the New York Times Magazine article, offers this take on the guerilla combat: "There are people in the wall [memorial] because they didn't realize a woman or child could be carrying a gun."

He and other veterans in the article describe a "take no prisoner" mentality in which terrified young officers were encouraged to shoot up villages and kill livestock.

Was the killing at Thanh Phong a war crime which the Pentagon should prosecute? What emerges in the accounts by Kerrey and other veterans sympathetic to his interpretation of events is the picture of a chaotic, futile struggle in which the definition of "war crime" had been made meaningless. Lawyer Walter Rockler, quoted in the New York Times, defines the lines like this: "The basic rule is that in enemy territory you don't kill civilians, particularly unarmed civilians." By the time Kerrey had entered the fray, that code of combat had been whittled away. And nine months after Thanh Phong, at least 350 civilians were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre.

While American strategy and war fighting in Vietnam are now nearly universally regarded as riddled with mistakes, even among those who support the basic idea behind intervention, the four Vietnam Veterans in the Senate - John McCain (R-Az), Max Cleland (D-Ga.), John Kerry (D-Ma.), and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) are widely applauded for making huge sacrifices for a losing cause. In an era when honor and politics don't mix easily, where only 6 percent of the population under 65 has served in the military, these four are generally looked upon as mavericks of the Senate. Men like McCain and Cleland don't easily fit in the Democratic or Republican mold; this doesn't always help them when it comes to fundraising, but it gives them a popular edge. Whether voters opposed the war or not, the fact that these men made it through the trauma alive gives them the mystique of straight shooters who can be tough to deal with but have to be respected nevertheless.

In the last two weeks, Kerrey has lost some of that sheen. We've seen less of the war hero, and a little more of the terrified 25-year old under fire. His attempts to deal with his past are applauded by many, but the motives behind his disclosures are seen by some analysts as mainly political. For two years the New York Times article — with its various accounts of Thanh Phong — had been in the making. It was no coincidence that Kerrey began to sell his version of the story a week before the article was finally published. And under several rounds of relentless and sometimes hostile questioning by reporters, it became clear why he had waited so long. He was being asked the same questions that had dogged homecoming soldiers in 1969. Were Americans in Vietnam, despite all their sacrifices, actually doing something wrong?

Kerrey defends inconsistencies in the stories of the night in Thanh Phong by recalling what Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), an army foot soldier wounded in Vietnam, calls "the chaos, the fear, the uncertainty of who your enemy is". A letter signed by Cleland, Hagel, and Kerry shortly after Kerrey's VMI speech say that this disclosure should be accepted as a reminder that "it's never too late to give the Vietnam Veterans the welcome they deserve." Although he didn't sign the letter of support that the other three signed, McCain made his sympathies clear in a more subdued manner: "My heart goes out to Bob Kerrey at this moment. All of us involved in war do things we're proud of and things we're not proud of."

Kerrey also asks for patience, given the anguish that the subject has caused him. "You're asking too much of me," he told the crowd of reporters at the Sheraton New York Hotel on April 26, "I'm in the early stages of telling this story. I'm trying to deal with it."

Veterans from all sides of the political arena seem to be forming a protective firewall around their comrade in arms, and the debate over the details of the awful night in Thahn Phong may actually be one more chapter in a belated homecoming. Many are treating it as extended therapy for the anguish that has dogged Kerrey, and millions of other Americans and Vietnamese, for 32 years.

Kerrey's revelations then not only remind all of us that in Vietnam war was hell, but they also resurrect for its detractors why there were so many who on principle chose not to fight. That is, if Kerrey is correct in what he says — that his Navy Seals were acting in accord with commands from above — then the war ran not only a flawed strategy, but an immoral one. The responsibility, and the war, should by this logic be placed not on foot soldiers and their field commanders, but on the highest military and civilian leaders in the United States.

For others, the tragic events at Thanh Phong constitute one of many instances of abject error and horror -- not something that speaks for the whole war effort, but rather of a calamity among thousands found in any conflict, including more widely supported ones like WWII, in the "fog of war."