16 August 2012 Last updated at 15:56 ET

Article written by Mark Mardell North America editor

• More from Mark
• Follow Mark on Twitter

Ex-Seals attack Obama's 'leaks' over Bin Laden

 

The video says national security leaks could be harmful to Americans

However nasty this election campaign gets, one thing no-one can take away from President Barack Obama is that he was in charge when Osama Bin Laden was killed.

If you think that, think again.

A tough new advert has been put out by a group calling themselves Special Ops OPSEC Education Fund, who say their mission is to "STOP the politicians, President Obama and others, from politically capitalizing on US national security operations and secrets!"

The organisation, which claims to be non-partisan despite being fronted by several Republicans, accuses the White House of putting national security at risk by leaking secrets.

But its main purpose is to attack President Obama for what it calls his bragging about the killing of Bin Laden and his claim of all the credit for a military operation.

Obama certainly did instantly seek maximum political advantage and rather laid it on with a trowel. Remember that moody picture of him watching the op?

After the killing, the White House and the president took pains to suggest that the operation wasn't something that just happened, but was a presidential priority.

They stressed it required Obama to make a difficult and agonising decision to authorise the actual mission, against the wishes of many advisors.

To counter this image a former Navy Seal Ben Smith says: "Mr President, you did not kill Bin Laden, America did."

The Obama campaign has accused the group of "Swift Boat tactics", recalling a highly effective ad from 2004 which questioned John Kerry's Vietnam record.

The new group rejects the accusation, saying that campaign was about narrow personal details, but theirs is about wider issues of national security.

At first sight this is only going to persuade the converted.

But the general thrust is in line with the current line from Mitt Romney's campaign.

Obama's biggest positive is his "likeability rating".

This suggestion that he's boastful and politically vain, like Romney's argument that Team Obama are running a campaign of hate and anger, is designed to undermine the president's personal appeal.

Some, of course, need no persuading.

The former Seal, Ben Smith, in an article (I am presuming there are not two former Navy Seals called Ben Smith) is not as terse as in the video, but even more dramatic.

He warns that America is in the middle of a "cold civil war", which is about to turn hot as "the Obama regime running our country into the ground" prepares to impose martial law.

He writes: "Keep preparing for rough times ahead. Stock your pantry in preparation for lean days, even as the regime attempts to make such things illegal.

"Focus your mind on liberty, that it should never die. I cannot tell you exactly what is coming but I know, as do you, that something unprecedented in American history, perhaps even all human history, is coming soon."

Before we are all forced to take to the hills, the verbal skirmishing will get harsher yet.