At USA Today’s On Deadline blog, they contacted Corey Mitchell, the author of “Killitary.”

Are you surprised to discover that he says he supports the troops?

On Deadline.

We just spoke with the true-crime author who wrote the piece and published it at Daily Kos and In Cold Blog.

“It’s not my intention to denigrate the troops,” Corey Mitchell says. “It’s to help them when they get back.”

Within a few hours of the original posting, Mitchell says he added a disclaimer: This article in no way is meant to suggest that all military members will become serial killers or mass murderers. It does point out a serious problem with what is happening in our armed forces and seeks a solution to help the brave men and women on their return back home.

But Mitchell says he then pulled the posting from both blogs after readers, liberals and conservatives alike, “ripped it to shreds.” He says no one from Daily Kos asked him to remove the posting.

“The piece was completely misinterpreted by the readers,” he says. “I don’t know if that’s because I did a bad job writing it? … My piece was pro-soldier all the way.”

We asked Mitchell if he thinks military service causes people to commit atrocities in civilian life.

“It can be a fraction of the whole painting of that person,” he says, adding: “I don’t think flat-out 100% if a person goes into the military they’re going to come out as a serial killer or mass murderer. I do think that everything in a killer’s life determines who they become.”

Mitchell says he may decide to republish the piece on his blog, but is weighing the effect of all the negative attention on his wife, who works on a military base, and their young daughter. “I have to weigh my family’s stress level versus how necessary is it to have that piece up,” he writes in a follow-up e-mail.