Is this passage altered in the book?
"A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole, clutching a grenade launcher, which may or may not have been loaded. ... Tom Belodeau, a forward gunner, shot the Viet Cong with an M-60 machine gun in the leg as he fled. ... Kerry and Medeiros (who had many troops in their boat) took off, perhaps with others, and followed the young Viet Cong and shot him in the back, behind a lean to."
Minor detail here, but all the links I've found say "clutching a grenade launcher, which may or may not have been loaded", yet I've been led to believe that the quote was changed in the book to "clutching an unloaded grenade launcher".
You can read one of the many quotes online here:
worldnetdaily
drudgereport
yahoo