I'm no fan of Panetta, but he knows more about why we're fighting than his immediate superior.
I'm sorry, but Panetta saying killing OBL was the "proudest moment of his life" sounds like shameless self-congratulations. He should he credited the troops--and his predecesors who headed the CIA as well as the president who hired those people, Bush, and allowed the interrogation methods that produced the intel breaks that lead to OBL's courier. Two thirds of the breaks that lead to Bin Laden and the start of our finding him all occured before Panetta, or Obama, were in place. A person of character would take themselves out of the equation and not pat their own back. Phrasing it as "one of the happiest moments of my life" would have made it seem less like saying "I'm so proud of what I accomplished!"