By: Sandra Sobieraj
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush led the nation
Wednesday in a prayerful but defiant remembrance,
making a pilgrimage to landscapes scarred a year ago
in terrorist attacks that shattered America's security but
drew its people together.
"The terrible illumination of these events has also
brought new clarity to America's role in the world,"
Bush said in a newspaper opinion piece that greeted
New Yorkers Wednesday morning. "We have the best
opportunity in generations to build a world where great
powers cooperate in peace instead of continually
prepare for war."
On the South Lawn of the White House, accompanied
by hundreds of his staff wearing American flag pins
engraved "Sept. 11, 2001. Sept. 11, 2002," Bush
squinted into the sun in silence at 8:46 a.m. EDT,
the minute a year ago that the first plane hit
New York's World Trade Center.
Americans watched the nation's observances on
television screens, which often were split with images
from Washington and New York, where the names of
victims were solemnly read at ground zero hours before
the president arrived.
Bush led America's observances from beneath an
extraordinarily heavy lid of security.
The government raised the nationwide terror alert
to its second-highest level, closed nine U.S. embassies
overseas and heightened security at federal buildings
and landmarks across the country as new intelligence
warned of car bombings, suicide attacks and other
anniversary-linked strikes.
Antiaircraft missiles ringed the capital.
Vice President Dick Cheney stayed out of sight to
preserve the line of presidential succession.
Grim-faced and gripping first lady Laura Bush's hand,
Bush began his day with prayer at the yellow-steepled
St. John's Church where presidential aides fled just minutes
after the White House was evacuated last Sept. 11.
"Sept. 11 is a day we are never going to forget, are we?"
the Rev. Luis Leon asked the congregation.
"But it did not break us.
They have bloodied us but they did not break us."
Bush leaned forward and slowly nodded his head in agreement.
At the Pentagon, the changes forced by last Sept. 11 were
boldly on display. Flags draped the building, and in one office
window was a taped sign that declared, "Marian, we miss you!"
Hundreds streamed off the subway and were handed small
American flags as they headed to a ceremony at the rebuilt
section of the five-sided military headquarters where one of
the jets crashed into flames, killing 189 people.
"It's all pretty and everything but the thoughts are still there.
It will never erase what we saw last year. That picture is
etched in your brain," said Melonise Wills, an Army hospital
worker who aided Pentagon victims.
Soldiers in helmets and full battle gear were posted at extra
locations around entrances to the building, as were Humvees
with soldiers and mounted machine guns.
And for the first time in decades, live anti-aircraft missiles were
mounted into launchers at locations protecting the capital city.
At the Capitol, some 40 senators boarded two blue Air Force
buses to travel to the Pentagon as flags flew at half-mast behind
them. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a former Navy secretary, said
his old office was "just around the corner" from where the plane
hit the Pentagon.
"I just want to be there," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.
Unlike the circling path that Air Force One took away from the
attacks' epicenter a year ago, the president's purposeful journey
on their anniversary was to touch each of the scars left by four
hijacked airliners that struck in Washington, New York City
and Pennsylvania.
As commander in chief, one who hopes Americans and
overseas allies alike will be emboldened to expand the
antiterror war into Iraq, Bush also was addressing military
personnel at the Pentagon, which was struck by the
hijacked American Airlines Flight 77.
St. John's, where Bush began what he called "hard day,"
stands beside the Lafayette Square space of green that
White House workers, following the shouted commands
of Secret Service agents, used to evacuate the Executive
Mansion. The orders were given at a time when it seemed
possible that a fourth hijacked airliner was headed toward
the nation's capital.
That plane crashed in western Pennsylvania.
Some of the 40 passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93
are believed to have fought their hijackers and perhaps
caused the plane to crash in a field near Shanksville, Pa.
Bush's own tribute in southwestern Pennsylvania was to be a
silent one - the laying of a wreath, the embrace of those left
behind. He has, in his every speech for months, honored the
Flight 93 heroism as "the most vivid and sad symbol" of the
kind of American solidarity that was reborn in the attacks.
At ground zero, the massive pit where the twin towers of the
World Trade Center once stood, Bush was meeting with the
victims' families before making a televised address to the nation
Wednesday night from Ellis Island, with the Statue of Liberty as
his backdrop.
As Bush wrote in an op-ed piece for Wednesday editions of
The New York Times, he wants to talk about "what our nation
has lost, what we have discovered about ourselves and what
lies ahead."
Bush had been aboard Air Force One, circling from Florida to air bases
in Louisiana and Nebraska - anywhere but Washington, which security
officials thought was unsafe when the twin towers collapsed.
In an interview from his office aboard the jet, Bush recalled to CBS
"60 Minutes II" for a special Wednesday broadcast that the moment
was a nightmare for him.
"I can remember sitting right here in this office thinking about the
consequences of what had taken place and realizing it was the
defining moment in the history of the United States," Bush said.
"I didn't need any legal briefs, I didn't need any consultations,
I knew we were at war."
He lingers in New York on Thursday and Friday to lay out, in an
address the U.N. General Assembly and in a round of private
meetings with world leaders, his argument that Iraq's Saddam
Hussein should be targeted in the next phase of that war.
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