New York Post

DON: BUBBA BLEW IT ON BIN LADEN

He ‘missed his shot’

- By MARK MOORE

President Trump boasted on Monday that he pointed out the threat from Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks, and chided former President Bill Clinton for missing his “shot” to kill the al Qaeda leader.

“Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton famously missed his shot,” Trump tweeted.

“We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!”

Trump mentioned bin Laden in “The America We Deserve,” which was published in January 2000.

“One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighter­s lay waste to his camp in Afghanista­n. He escapes back under some rock,” Trump wrote in the book.

He was referring to the Clinton administra­tion’s unsuccessf­ul military strikes against bin Laden in Afghanista­n in 1998.

Meanwhile, allies of retired Navy SEAL Adm. William McRaven, who directed the 2011 operation that took down bin Laden in Pakistan, ripped Trump for saying McRaven should have gotten the terrorist earlier.

Robert O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who is credited with firing the shot that killed the terror kingpin, wrote on Twitter, “The mission to get bin Laden was bipartisan. We all wanted to get him as soonn as we could.”d.”

Retiredtir­ed Armyy Lt. Gen.. Mark Hertling,tling, who serveded with McRavenRav­en (inset) in Afghanista­n and Iraq, said the commanderm­ander in chieff ’s’s comments only dis-distractt from McRaven’s point that Trump’s attacking the media was the “greatest threat to democracy” he’s seen in his lifetime. “Now everyone is talking about insults on McCraven as opposed to freedom of the press,” Hertling said on CNN. Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said Trump is creating a leadership crisis among the troops. “We have to be able to believe in enough of what that leader represents to feel comfortabl­e following them, sosometime­s to our deaths,” McChrystal­McChry said on CNN. Trump belittlebe­littled McRaven in an interview with “Fox News SundaSunda­y.” “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner ththan that? Wouldn’t it have been nice?” said TrumTrump, who receivedce­ived five draft ddeferment­s, including one for bone spurs in his foot, to get out of servinging during the Vietnam WWar.

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