Obama Catching Flak For 'Boasting Too Much' About Taking Out Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in an operation carried out by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs and ordered by President Barack Obama.

As the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 mastermind's death approaches, Obama is being criticized on several fronts for continually touting his decision to order the mission that resulted in bin Laden's death.

On Friday, he was catching heat from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Republican Sen. John McCain, and the New York Times.

Obama's re-election campaign released a video ad Friday that implies Romney would not have ordered the raid that killed bin Laden.

Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul called the video sad and divisive.

"It's now sad to see the Obama campaign seek to use an event that unified our country to once again divide us, in order to try to distract voters' attention from the failures of his administration," Saul said in a statement. "With 23 million Americans struggling for work, our national debt soaring, and household budgets being squeezed like never before, Mitt Romney is focused on strengthening America at home and abroad."

McCain, Obama's opponent in the 2008 presidential election, blasted him for casting doubt on whether Romney would have ordered the raid a year ago, calling it "a cheap political attack."

"No one disputes that the President deserves credit for ordering the raid, but to politicize it in this way is the height of hypocrisy," McCain said in remarks that were emailed to reporters by the Republican National Committee.

"This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't 'spike the ball' after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected," McCain said.

In a Friday evening report headlined "Obama Trumpets Killing of Bin Laden, and Critics Pounce," the New York Times noted "in the days leading up to the first anniversary of the raid that finally caught up to (bin Laden), Mr. Obama has made a concerted, if to some indecorous, effort to trumpet the killing as perhaps the central accomplishment of his presidency.

"Mr. Obama has used the rarefied setting of the Situation Room to give an interview about how he made the decision to send in Special Operations forces," the Times reported.

"Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. gave a speech saying the re-election slogan would be 'Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.'

"The president's campaign released a Web video showing former President Bill Clinton praising Mr. Obama's fortitude, as it questioned whether Mitt Romney would have made the same decision," the Times reported.

"Other presidents have boasted of their toughness, of course, notably Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who campaigned for re-election in 2004 on a record of having deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, while his vice president, Dick Cheney, warned that electing John Kerry could lead to a terrorist attack," the Times reported.

"But few presidents have talked about the killing of an individual enemy in such an expansive way."

To read the full NYT report, click here.