Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainKelly's lead widens to 10 points in Arizona Senate race: poll COVID response shows a way forward on private gun sale checks Trump pulls into must-win Arizona trailing in polls MORE (R-Ariz.) invoked his own history as a prisoner of war as he responded to the White House’s criticism of his assessment of a controversial, deadly raid in Yemen.

“Many years ago, when I was imprisoned in North Vietnam, there was an attempt to rescue the POWs,” McCain told NBC News. “Unfortunately, the prison had been evacuated, but the brave men who took— risked their lives in an effort to rescue us prisoners of war were genuine American heroes.

“Because the mission failed did not in any way diminish their courage and willingness to help their fellow Americans who were help captive. Mr. Spicer should know that story.”

Sen McCain responds to WH Spox @seanspicer suggesting he should apologize for not calling Yemen raid a success w/ a bit of a history lesson: pic.twitter.com/9zvjGGNkoT — Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) February 8, 2017

The comment was in response to White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who earlier Wednesday said that McCain and others who criticized the raid where doing a “disservice” to a Navy SEAL who died.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The life of chief Ryan Owens was done in service to his country and we owe him and his family a great debt for the information we received during that raid,” Spicer said. “Any suggestion otherwise is a disservice to his courageous life and the actions he took. Full stop.”

The raid against al Qaeda’s Yemen branch has become a flashpoint of controversy after reports painted a chaotic scene where everything that can go wrong did. Civilians were killed, with reports that children were among the dead.

After a classified briefing on the raid Tuesday, McCain called it a “failure.”

His office later released a statement with toned-down, but still critical, language.

“While many of the objectives of the recent raid in Yemen were met, I would not describe any operation that results in the loss of American life as a success,” McCain said in the statement. “Going forward, I am confident that our military will act on lessons learned from this operation to strengthen our fight against our terrorist enemies.”