Not exactly what I said. Put in the exact same circumstances, I believe I would have done the same thing as Calley or Kerrey. Kill or be killed. This was not a war in which the bad guys wore red coats to identify themselves. These officers acted on the assumption that they were fighting the "enemy". That's what soldiers do - kill the enemy before he kills you or yours.

The bureaucrats betrayed Calley when they set him up to take the fall rather than tell Mrs. Murphy in middletown, USA that their war had turned her apple cheeked son into a monster capable of believing that killing women and children was a necessary action. Keep in mind that those women and children may have been the "enemy". Also keep in mind that Kerrey was given a medal for doing exactly what Calley did. Calley was painted as a demented "psycho" who was just as likely to climb a campus tower and shoot down students. He was in fact a soldier behaving under combat conditions.

Am I condoning murder? - NO. I am looking at both situations from the perspective of a mother who knows that her child properly trained by her government is capable of the same actions. Who then is responsible? As I said earlier: No child of mine, no grandchild of mine will ever go to war to defend anything but American soil and maybe Canada. Narrow thinking and stupid? I agree. But I don't trust our politicians to spend the lives of our children wisely or honestly.