New York: Former US President Donald Trump has lauded the US Navy SEALs, saying history will forever remember them as the special force that stormed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and “put a bullet in his head.”
Speaking at an event in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday marking the US Navy’s 250th anniversary, Trump also reiterated his long-standing claim that he had warned about bin Laden a year before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“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 said. He added that he had urged authorities to monitor bin Laden a year before the 9/11 attacks, but “the fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true.”
“Please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year before he blew up the World Trade Centre,” Trump said. “I said, ‘You’ve got to watch Osama bin Laden.’ But they didn’t do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Centre.”
Taking credit for his warning, Trump added, “I got to take a little credit, because nobody else is going to give it to me. You know the old story — they don’t give you credit, just take it yourself.”
He went on to recall that it was the US Navy that “dumped bin Laden’s wretched corpse off the decks” of the USS Carl Vinson to “sink into the dark abyss.”
Bin Laden was killed in a US Navy SEAL raid in May 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during an operation authorised by then-President Barack Obama. In his televised address after the mission, Obama had announced: “The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”
Trump, who has often criticised the US withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Joe Biden, also said America could have easily won the Afghanistan war.
“But we got politically correct. ‘Let’s take it easy.’ We’re not politically correct anymore,” he said. “Just so you understand — we win now. We don’t want to be politically correct anymore.”
