{"id":190419,"date":"2018-11-20T05:18:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T10:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=190419"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:18:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T10:18:00","slug":"trump-criticizes-war-hero-for-not-capturing-bin-laden-sooner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/11\/20\/trump-criticizes-war-hero-for-not-capturing-bin-laden-sooner\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump criticizes war hero for not capturing bin Laden sooner"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FILE: President of the United States Donald J. Trump at CPAC 2017 February 24th 2017 by Michael Vadon (Photo<\/a>: Michael Vadon\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump has ignited a firestorm of criticism and charges that he is politicizing the military by faulting a war hero for not capturing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden sooner.<\/p>\n

Trump took shots at retired Adm. William McRaven in a weekend Fox News interview in which he also asserted that the former Navy SEAL and former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command was a \u201cbacker\u201d of Trump’s 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and supporter of President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisgusting,\u201d the George W. Bush administration’s White House counterterrorism adviser, Fran Townsend, wrote Monday on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Leon Panetta, who was CIA director during the bin Laden raid and later served as secretary of defence, said Trump owed an apology to McRaven and to all of those in the military and intelligence agencies who played a role in tracking down bin Laden and carrying out the risky raid into Pakistan. He called Trump’s remark \u201cpatently ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of how our military and intelligence agencies operate and undermines the president’s own standing as commander-in-chief,\u201d Panetta said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The controversy follows a pattern of concerns raised by former senior military officers about Trump’s grasp of the military’s role. Some assert that his decision to send thousands of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border shortly before the Nov. 6 midterm elections was a political stunt.<\/p>\n

Trump also drew criticism for his decision not to visit Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day last week, following his trip to Europe. He said later he \u201cshould have\u201d visited the cemetery but was too busy with official business.<\/p>\n

McRaven told CNN he is a fan both of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, having served under them. \u201cI admire all presidents, regardless of their political party, who uphold the dignity of the office and who use that office to bring the nation together in challenging times,\u201d he said pointedly.<\/p>\n

McRaven previously had drawn widespread attention for lambasting Trump for repeatedly calling the news media the \u201cenemy of the people.\u201d McRaven had said the president’s words were \u201cthe greatest threat to democracy\u201d in his lifetime. When this was raised in the Fox News interview, Trump lashed out at McRaven, who organized and executed the bin Laden raid in Pakistan in May 2011 as head of the secretive Joint Special Operation Command.<\/p>\n

\u201cWouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

Asked whether military leaders were not due credit for having killed the al-Qaida leader, Trump said, \u201cThey took him down but – look, look, there’s news right there, he lived in Pakistan, we’re supporting Pakistan, we’re giving them $1.3 billion a year, which we don’t give them anymore, by the way, I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump has ignited a firestorm of criticism and charges that he is politicizing the military by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":178806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-robert-burns","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}