Vietnam POW, Former Senator Jeremiah Denton Dies

[BlueStateSaint]

Rest in peace, RADM/Sen. Denton.

Vietnam POW, Former Senator Jeremiah Denton Dies

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
March 28, 2014 11:35 am

Former Alabama Sen. Jeremiah Denton, a retired Navy rear admiral who survived nearly eight years in captivity in Vietnam died Friday at age 89, according to the Washington Post.

Adm. Denton was shot down during a bombing mission near the Thanh Hoa Bridge on July 18, 1965. Denton published a memoir about his time as a prisoner of war.

Over the next seven years and seven months, Adm. Denton was incarcerated in prisons including the infamous Hoa Lo complex, also known as the Hanoi Hilton, and the facility dubbed “Alcatraz” that was reserved for the most willful resisters. Also at Alcatraz were James B. Stockdale, the future vice presidential running mate of Ross Perot, and Sam Johnson, the future Republican congressman from Texas.

Adm. Denton was subjected to four years in solitary confinement. Living in roach- and rat-infested conditions, he endured starvation, delirium and torture sessions that sometimes lasted days.

Denton was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980. He was the first Republican to win a seat in Alabama since Reconstruction. He lost his reelection bid in 1986.

The rest is here:  http://freebeacon.com/national-security/vietnam-pow-former-senator-jeremiah-denton-dies/

[hillneck]

RIP, Mr. Denton.  True hero.

[BlueStateSaint]

Here's Rich Lowry's column in today's New York Post:

Jeremiah Denton: Grade-A hero

By Rich Lowry

March 31, 2014 | 10:29pm



Retired Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, seen in 2009, famously blinked T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse Code (inset) when his North Vietnamese captors put him in front of a camera.

Photo: Reuters

Jeremiah Denton, the Vietnam War POW who died Friday at age 89, uttered one of the great statements of defiance in American history.
 
In 1965, he was shot down in his A-6 during a bombing run over North Vietnam. He became a captive for more than seven years and endured an unimaginable regime of torture, humiliation and isolation, managing to retain his dignity and spirit even as his captors went to hideous lengths to snuff them out.
 
Soon after his capture, a young North Vietnamese solider signaled to him to bow down and, when he refused, pressed a gun to his head so hard it created a welt. Denton quickly learned that this would be mild treatment. He was taken to Hoa Lo Prison, or the Hanoi Hilton, where he led the resistance to the North Vietnamese efforts to extract propaganda confessions from their prisoners.
 
As Denton related in his book, “When Hell Was in Session,” they tried to starve one out of him. After days, he began to hallucinate, but he still refused. They took him to what was called the Meathook Room and beat him. Then, they twisted his arms with ropes and relented just enough to keep him from passing out. They rolled an iron bar on his legs and jumped up and down on it. For hours.
 
He agreed finally to give them a little of what they wanted, but at first his hands were too weak to write and his voice too weak to speak. He hadn’t recovered from this ordeal when the Vietnamese told him he would appear at a press conference.

The rest is here: http://nypost.com/2014/03/31/jeremiah-denton-grade-a-hero/

[obumazombie]

I posted this on my other forum and got one member from CC to reply, and some irrational lib replies. Sorry for the libs...

http://www.netfriction.com/DisplayThread.asp?BD=2144767&Page=2&ForumID=91&msgid=2144767&OM=2144767#2144767