Obama gifts tape to SEALs to measure Osama's body

United States President Barack Obama gifted a measuring tape to the commander of the US SEALs, an elite navy unit which killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, after he found out that the commandos did not have one to measure the height of slain Al Qaeda leader following the covert raid.

Obama, also the commander-in-chief of the US military, gifted the measuring tape to Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven, the SEAL in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command after the May 2 raid on bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.

The US President's gesture came after he got to know that the SEALs struggled to measure the height of 54-year-old bin Laden at a US airbase in the Afghan city of Jalalabad following the al-Qaeda leader's killing, the New Yorker magazine said in its latest issue bringing into light new aspects of the entire mission, which was codenamed Operation Neptune's Spear.

Bin Laden was believed to be about six feet four, "but no one had a tape measure to confirm the body's length. So one SEAL, who was six feet tall, lay beside the corpse: it measured roughly four inches longer than the American," the report said.

Earlier, when bin Laden's body was brought, a pair of SEALs unloaded the body bag and unzipped it so that McRaven and the Central Investigation Agency station chief could see the corpse.

Once McRaven was convinced that the body belonged to bin Laden, he appeared on the teleconference screen in the Situation Room in the White House and confirmed that the Al Qaeda chief's body was in the bag.

Then the corpse was sent to Bagram airbase from where it was transported on a flip-wing V-22 Osprey aircraft to USS Carl Vinson -- a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier sailing in the Arabian Sea. Bin Laden's body was then given a sea burial.