(Reopens FGN 8)

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Press Trust of India
Last Updated : Feb 12 2013 | 2:55 PM IST
"I'm just looking at him from right here (he moves his hand out from his face about ten inches). He's got a gun on a shelf right there, the short AK he's famous for. And he's moving forward," the SEAL said. "I don't know if she's got a vest and she's being pushed to martyr them both. He's got a gun within reach. He's a threat. I need to get a head shot so he won't have a chance to clack himself off (blow himself up)," the SEAL said, adding that he thought that Osama was reaching for his AK-47. "In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he's going down. He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! same place," he said of the three shots he took at the al-Qaeda chief. "That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath," the SEAL said. "I remember as I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I've ever done, or the worst thing I've ever done? This is real and that's him," he said of his thoughts after killing Osama. "His forehead was gruesome. It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brains spilling out over his face. The American public doesn't want to know what that looks like. Amal turned back, and she was screaming, first at bin Laden and then at me," he said. When the US helicopter crashed inside the compound on arrival, the Navy SEAL said he thought that they would never be able to get out of the country. "I thought we'd have to steal cars and drive to Islamabad. Because the other option was to stick around and wait for the Pakistani military to show up. Hopefully, we don't shoot it out with them. We're going to end up in prison here, with someone negotiating for us, and that's just bad. That's when I got concerned," he said. "I've thought about death before, when I've been pinned down for an hour getting shot at. And I wondered what it was going to feel like taking one of those in the face. How long was it going to hurt? But I didn't think about that here," The SEAL said.
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First Published: Feb 12 2013 | 2:55 PM IST

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