Don't let Kerrey off the hook yet.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

I want to believe Bob Kerrey. One thing that has become clear over the last few days is that almost everyone in America wants to believe the former U.S. senator when he says the killing of 13 unarmed Vietnamese women and children in 1969 was a tragic accident of war. Desperately, too desperately, we want to believe.

We want to believe because Bob Kerrey is a hero. We want to believe because Kerrey has suffered so much: He lost a leg, then picked himself up and went on to a stellar career in public service. We want to believe Kerrey because he is courageous and decent, and no one wants to crucify him.

We want to believe because we feel guilty about the war, or guilty for not having gone, or guilty about how shabbily those who did go were treated when they returned. And mostly we want it to be over. So just about everyone, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, James Carville and George Will, has lined up behind Kerrey.

I want to believe, too. Yet I can't get beyond certain nagging doubts and questions.

The story that Kerrey, who commanded the squad, tells is that as the unit approached the village, it received and returned fire. When the men entered the village, however, they discovered, to their horror, that all the dead were women and children. ``I was expecting to find Viet Cong soldiers with weapons, dead. Instead I found women and children.''

Initially reluctant to speak to the reporter who broke the story, all but one of the members of Kerrey's commando team subsequently issued a statement corroborating his account.

The exception is Gerhard Klann, the most experienced of the team of Navy SEALs who raided the Vietnamese peasant village of Thanh Phong on Feb. 25, 1969. His account, which led to a cover page article by Gregory L. Vistica in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, differs crucially from Kerrey's.