OMAHA - Former senator Bob Kerrey says he is haunted by a raid he led into enemy territory in
  Vietnam 32 years ago, in which only civilians - women, children and older men - were killed.

  Kerrey, who has not ruled out a run for president in 2004, received a Bronze Star for the Feb. 25,
  1969, raid in the Mekong Delta. The award citation says 21 Viet Cong were killed and enemy
  weapons were captured or destroyed.

  "The citation is different than what we reported'' to military superiors, Kerrey said.

  ``I lived with this privately for 32 years,'' he said. ``I felt it best to keep this memory private. I can't
  keep it private any more. My conscience tells me some good should come from this.''

  Kerrey talked about the raid publicly for the first time last week in a speech to ROTC students at
  Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va. He said he decided to give his account after hearing that
  another member of his squad was offering a different version.

  ``I went out on a mission and after it was over I was so ashamed I wanted to die,'' Kerrey told The
  Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday. ``This is killing me. I'm tired of people
  describing me as a hero and holding this inside.''

  Kerrey said the mission on which the civilians were killed took place on a moonless night.
  Shots were fired at his squad and his men returned fire.

  ``But when the fire stopped, we found that we had killed only women, children and older men. It was
  not a military victory. It was a tragedy and I had ordered it,'' Kerrey said in his ROTC speech.

  Kerrey said he and the six squad members each have different memories of the night. He said another
  squad member has been saying they rounded up a bunch of people and shot them, which Kerrey
  emphatically denied.

  Kerrey believes Viet Cong were likely firing upon his crew from behind the civilians, which would
  justify the killings from a military standpoint, but said he could not be at peace with it personally.