Obama says Romney would not have killed bin Laden Mr Clinton said that by risking the lives of US Navy SEALs - and his career - by ordering the raid on bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, Mr Obama "took the harder and the more honourable path." Vice President Joe Biden also told a rally this week that Mr Obama's campaign bumper sticker should read: "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," while the "reverse" might have been true under Mr Romney. Mr Romney, who has distanced himself from his 2007 remarks, said last year of Mr Obama's decision to authorise the bin Laden raid: "Any president would have done that." The row came as Mr Obama was sharply criticised by a former senior CIA officer for banning interrogation techniques such as waterboarding used on terror suspects under George W Bush's rule. Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's clandestine service, said more than 10 plots were stopped thanks to the techniques, which also included sleep deprivation and enforced nudity. "We made some al-Qaeda terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days," he told CBS. I am very secure in what we did and very confident that what we did saved American lives. By Jon Swaine in Washington President Barack Obama has seized upon the imminent first anniversary of Osama bin Laden's assassination to claim that the al-Qaeda chief would probably still be alive if Mitt Romney had been president. In the most strident attack so far on his Republican rival's credentials as a potential commander-in-chief, Mr Obama suggested Mr Romney would have demurred if given the opportunity to kill bin Laden. A campaign advertisement released yesterday highlighted Mr Romney's 2007 comment that it was "not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars" to find the mastermind of 9/11. Former president Bill Clinton, who is emerging as a key Obama mouthpiece, is used to endorse the president's decisiveness. The commander-in-chief gets one chance to make the right decision. Nobody can make that decision for you," he says. The advertisement, backed with tense string music, strikes at the heart of Mr Romney's main claim for the US presidency: that he is the ruthless chief executive that America needs to lift the country out of its economic doldrums. His biographers claim that he was in fact a risk-averse businessman, notorious for nervously playing with his tie when forced to make difficult decisions and only agreeing to head a new private-equity arm of the Bain consultancy group if he could return to his old job under a cover story if it failed.