 Jeremiah Denton in 1966 interview with Japanese TV |
Denton, whose Navy A-6E Intruder jet was shot down over the North Vietnamese stronghold of Thanh Hoa, recounted his remarkable struggle to survive eight years of brutal captivity in a classic book that WND Books is reissuing today, including a major new section written by Denton for today's generation.
In the new "When Hell was in Session," the former U.S. senator and legendary American military hero tells the rest of the story, starting with the shock he experienced upon his return to the United States in 1973 to find his beloved nation had drastically changed since his capture in 1965.
Get "When Hell was in Session" – AUTOGRAPHED BY ADM. JEREMIAH DENTON – at WND's Superstore.
"I saw the appearance of X-rated movies, adult magazines, massage parlors, the proliferation of drugs, promiscuity, pre-marital sex, and unwed mothers."
That scenario, he writes, was coupled with "the tumultuous post-war Vietnam political events, starting with Congress forfeiting our military victory, thus betraying our victorious American and allied servicemen and women, who had won the war at great cost of blood and sacrifice."
See the ABC News report with video of Denton's 1966 "t-o-r-t-u-r-e" interview, as well as his stirring comments upon touching down back in America after 8 years in captivity:
Denton, who eventually attained the rank of rear admiral, didn't just talk, however, forming a foundation to engage America's cultural and national security ills and winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1980 to work with President Reagan to end the Cold War and quell the spread of communism in Latin America.
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The most basic principle that distinguishes America as a nation, he said, is the Declaration of Independence's assertion that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.
 Jeremiah Denton after his return to the U.S. in 1973 |
"Nobody is interpreting rights now in terms of the Creator," he said. "He endowed the rights."
President Obama, Denton contended, is usurping the rights of God, "as did Hitler and Stalin and the emperors of Rome."
"They all had gods – but when they didn't have good enough gods to constitute a culture, they went to hell," Denton told WND. "And we are too, if we continue to believe that man, all of us individually, or our government, can determine what the rights are and set up everything else to match that. We're done."
Denton said he believes the U.S. is in its worst security position since World War II, when Hitler was sweeping across Europe.
He explained that in the aftermath of that war, the U.S. didn't have to worry as much about its conventional weapons and forces because of its nuclear might and the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction" with the Soviet Union.
But now, he said, with a decreasing percentage of America's GDP devoted to defense – coupled with China's and Russia's buildup of conventional forces – America's security is at risk.
"If Russia were to take over first Georgia, then Ukraine – and maybe China moves into India – we couldn't go there with a conventional force and stop that, and we wouldn't have the guts to use nuclear, for good reason," he said.
Denton says that while military leaders he speaks with agree with his analysis, President Obama, Secretary of Defense Gates and other top officials don't recognize the problem.
"We don't really have the proper national intelligence the way we used to have," he said. "We had people like Clare Boothe Luce and brilliant people from many different fields come in, but we don't do that anymore. It's done on a haphazard basis."
