Trump claims he warned about Osama bin Laden a year before 9/11
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Washington: President Donald Trump claimed he had warned about Osama bin Laden a year before the al-Qaeda leader orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, while lauding US Navy SEALs for killing bin Laden and disposing of his body into the "dark abyss."
Speaking at a special event in Norfolk, Virginia, to mark the US Navy’s 250th anniversary on Sunday, Trump said, “History will never forget that it was the SEALs who stormed the compound of Osama bin Laden and put a bullet in his head.”
He further asserted that one year prior to the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, he had warned about bin Laden, stating, “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.' And the fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true. But I said one year before… 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. You know the old story, they don’t give you credit. Just take it yourself.”
Trump praised the Navy for the operation that killed bin Laden in May 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. “It was the US Navy that dumped bin Laden’s wretched corpse off the decks of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson to sink into the dark abyss,” he said.
The raid, authorised by then-President Barack Obama, led Obama to address the nation from the White House East Room, stating, “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, critical of the US exit from Afghanistan under President Joe Biden, added, “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.”
With PTI inputs