Geo Amazing and Interesting

Hoops on deck for Obama on bin Laden carrier

ON BOARD THE USS CARL VINSON: President Barack Obama Friday hailed US veterans at a unique college basketball game on the deck of the aircraft carrier which sent Osama bin Laden to his underwater grave. Obama and his wife Michelle sat courtside on the USS Carl Vinson, among 7,000 spectators in San Diego Bay, en route to an Asia Pacific summit in his native Hawaii. With floodlights highlighting the hulking carrier's bridge, Obama watched North Carolina beat Michigan State 67-55 on a hardwood court laid on the flight deck that caterpaulted US warplanes to bomb targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Marking Veterans Day, Obama noted the vessel's key role in the US wars launched after the September 11 attacks in 2001. "It was from this aircraft carrier that some of the first assaults on Iraq were launched," Obama said in a short speech on the court before the opening tip-off between two teams wearing camouflage uniforms. "This ship supports what is happening in Afghanistan." "To all our veterans to all our men and women in uniform we say thank you," said Obama," after two fighter jets streaked over the nuclear powered carrier during patriotic pre-game celebrations. Later, in an interview with ESPN, Obama noted that the ship will now forever be remembered for a symbolic moment in the US anti-terror campaign. "This is the last time that Osama bin Laden was on the face of the Earth. And so there's a lot of history on this ship," Obama said. The Carl Vinson, then believed to be steaming in the Indian Ocean, was the vessel to which the body of Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden was taken. (AFP)