Artful Dodger:

> Frankly, I really don't know what would have been the best thing to do with his body.

This was a tough call. On the one hand, I understand that the administration tried to avoid making a difficult situation even worse by displaying the bullet-ridden body around for days on end. I can understand the desire to avoid confronting Moslems further. After all, the ultimate goal of all this mess is that we may have peace some day. While in anger I might say that they should have put the thumbscrews on him, I also think that in the long term that would be more destructive than constructive.

Burying it on land is a tough one. Which country would want that? Anywhere that his body went to would become a target for two groups. First, his followers would try to retrieve the body or build a shrine to a martyr. Second, those who hate him would try to desecrate his grave. Burying him on land anywhere was a lose-lose situation. Probably the only acceptable place for his followers would have been an Islamic country, and nobody in the Middle East would want to end up with that hot potato.

Burial at sea made the most sense, short of spreading his ashes somewhere. His head might point to the bottom of the Red Sea and not to Mecca, but at least nobody is going to try to get to his mortal remains.