New York/Washington, Oct 6 (PTI) — President Donald Trump has taken credit for foreseeing the threat of Osama bin Laden a year before the devastating 9/11 attacks orchestrated by the al-Qaeda leader. Trump praised the US Navy SEALs for their pivotal role in eliminating bin Laden, celebrating their action of putting "a bullet in his head" and consigning his body to the sea's depths.
During a speech in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday, commemorating the US Navy's 250th anniversary, Trump stated, “History will never forget that it was the SEALs who stormed the compound (of) Osama bin Laden and put a bullet in his head.”
Trump asserted that he had warned about bin Laden a year before the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. "Please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year before he blew up the World Trade Centre. And I said, ‘You got to watch Osama bin Laden’," Trump remarked. He criticized the media, saying, "The fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true."
He added, "I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden, and I didn't like it. And you got to take care of him. They didn't do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Centre. So got to take a little credit, because nobody else is going to give it to me."
Highlighting the Navy's pivotal role, Trump elaborated on bin Laden's demise. "It was the US Navy that 'dumped' bin Laden's 'wretched corpse off the decks’ of the USS Carl Vinson into the dark abyss," he said.
Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 during a daring US Navy SEAL operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, sanctioned by then-President Barack Obama. Announcing the operation's success, Obama had stated from the White House, “I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”
Trump, voicing criticism of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan overseen by former President Joe Biden, asserted that America easily could have won the Afghanistan war. "But we got politically correct. ‘Let's take it easy’. We're not politically correct anymore. Just so you understand, we win. Now we win. We don't want to be politically correct anymore," he concluded.
(Only the headline of this report may have been reworked by Editorji; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)