President Donald Trump has ignited a firestorm of criticism and charges that he is politicising the military by faulting a war hero for not capturing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sooner.
Trump took shots at retired Admiral William McRaven in a Fox News interview on Sunday in which he also asserted that the former Navy SEAL and former commander of US Special Operations Command was a "backer" of Trump's 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and supporter of President Barack Obama.
"Disgusting," the George W. Bush administration's White House counter-terrorism adviser, Fran Townsend, wrote on Monday on Twitter.
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 "patently ridiculous."
"It 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," Panetta said in a statement.
The controversy follows a pattern of concerns raised by former senior military officers about Trump's grasp of the military's role, including those who assert that his decision to send thousands of troops to the US-Mexico border shortly before the November 6 mid-term elections was a political stunt.
McRaven told CNN he is a fan both of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, having served under them.
"I 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," he said pointedly.
McRaven previously had drawn attention for lambasting Trump for repeatedly calling the news media the "enemy of the people." McRaven had said the president's words were "the greatest threat to democracy" in his lifetime.
When this was raised in the Fox News interview, Trump lashed out at McRaven, who organised and executed the bin Laden raid in Pakistan in May 2011 as head of the secretive Joint Special Operation Command.
"Wouldn't it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn't it have been nice?" Trump said.
Australian Associated Press
