Mother Jones
Mon May. 9, 2011
Getting tipped overboard is just the beginning. The gory – and fascinating – science of sleeping with the fishes.
Last Monday, at around 11 in the morning local time, Osama Bin Laden’s body dropped from the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson into the Arabian Sea. According to the Pentagon, the hours-old corpse had been washed and placed in a simple white sheet in accordance with Islamic practice. It was then sealed inside a weighted bag and laid on top of a board, which was tilted until “the body slid off into the sea.”
Back on land, the controversy surrounding Bin Laden’s last splash was just beginning. But beneath the waves, nature was taking its course, quietly and methodically turning the world’s most-wanted terrorist into fish food. You could say Osama bin Laden had received the ultimate green burial, courtesy of the United States Navy.
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