Obama under scanner for wrongly taking credit for Bin Laden killing

Washington -  White House contender Mitt Romney’s supporter and former U.N. envoy John Bolton has accused President Barack Obama of wrongly taking credit for the killing of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

“You know, the irony is, he’s campaigning on the basis that he’s a success as a foreign policy president. It’s just really amazing and you ask, what is it that made the success? And it’s because Navy SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden. That’s his definition of success,” ABC News quoted Bolton, as saying.

“As somebody pointed out, in 1969 when Americans landed on the moon, it’s like Richard Nixon taking credit for that, because it happened to occur during his presidency. The fact of the matter is this president has been a failure across the board in foreign policy and it’s jeopardized the United States in critical ways,” he added.

His statement came after his earlier announcement of endorsing Romney for the 2012 US presidential bid.

About 300 Romney fans, who had gathered for the “Veterans for Romney” Forum broke into applause on hearing Bolton’s speech.

South Carolina Governor Niki Haley and Republican John McCain also defended Romney by speaking in favour of free markets and private enterprise.

“I want to just remind you that we are conservatives, that we are Republicans, whether we’re independents, whatever we are, what makes this country great is that we value the free market. Let’s not let ourselves get involved in a debate and join the Democrats when we start trashing the free market or trashing private enterprise,” Haley said.

McCain cited the example of Staples, a company which Romney had helped finance with venture capital to indicate Romney’s ability to revive the economy.