WASHINGTON — He’s one of them — a disabled veteran who lost part of his right foot to a mine in Vietnam, a soldier who riled his superiors in the Bush years by telling Congress the U.S. needed more troops in Iraq than the administration wanted.

That bond is why veterans groups overwhelmingly endorsed Eric Shinseki as Veterans Affairs secretary in 2009. And it’s part of the reason many continued to support him until his resignation Friday in the firestorm surrounding lengthy waits for veterans to get care at VA hospitals and reports that employees had tried to cover them up.

“I extend an apology to the people whom I care most deeply about — that’s the veterans of this great country — to their families and loved ones,” Shinseki said Friday before giving President Barack Obama his resignation.

Support for Shinseki among vets groups was not universal. The American Legion led the call for his resignation.

“It is not the solution, yet it is a beginning,” National Commander Daniel M. Dellinger said.

As Army chief of staff in 2003, Shinseki bluntly told Congress it would take a sustained presence of several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq after the U.S. invasion, an estimate far higher than Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld used to sell the public on American intervention. Rumsfeld and deputy Paul Wolfowitz belittled Shinseki’s testimony and he soon retired.

But his words proved prophetic — and subsequent military leaders acknowledged as much when President George W. Bush ordered a “surge” of troops to Iraq. In nominating Shinseki to lead the VA, Obama said he’d chosen him in part because he had stood up for the truth — and for overburdened fighting soldiers — in that war.

Like the president himself, Hawaii-born Shinseki also represented a racial milestone, as the first Army four-star general of Japanese-American descent.

By all accounts, the VA is difficult to manage. Consider the numbers: 9 million veterans get health care from the VA and nearly 4 million receive compensation for injuries and illnesses incurred from their service. The department runs 150 hospitals and more than 800 outpatient clinics.

Shinseki, 71, served longer than any other VA secretary since 1989, when the agency became a cabinet-level department. Bush had three VA secretaries and one acting secretary during two terms. Shinseki’s longevity gave him ownership of — and responsibility for — the VA’s myriad problems, many exacerbated by the needs of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.