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September
11 Remembered, New Targets Eyed
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| Bush
made clear he would carry the fight into other unspecified
nations with the goal of denying terrorist networks any safe
haven. |
WASHINGTON,
March 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United States
paused Monday to remember and contemplate new targets in the
accelerating global war, sparked exactly six months ago after the
September 11 attacks rained terror on U.S. soil, killing over 3,000
people.
U.S. President George W. Bush led tributes to honor the office
workers, service personnel, fire and police officers and passengers,
who died when hijacked airliners crashed into New York's World Trade
Center, Washington's Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.
Bristling with defiance, Bush lauded the success of subsequent U.S.
anti-terror operations in Afghanistan and pledged to prosecute a
campaign against states with the potential to arm terrorists with
weapons of mass destruction.
"Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control
the ultimate instruments of death," Bush declared, warning
foreign governments that neutrality was not an option.
"Terrorist groups are hungry for these weapons, and would use
them without a hint of conscience," he told an audience of
relatives of the September 11 dead, Washington's political elite and
foreign ambassadors, at an open air White House ceremony.
"America will not forget the lives that were taken and the
justice their death requires," warned Bush, in a speech that
included only indirect references to the suspected mastermind of the
attacks, Osama bin Laden.
"September 11 was not the beginning of global terror, but it
was the beginning of the world's concerted response," Bush
said. "History will know that day not only as a day of tragedy,
but as a day of decision, when the civilized world was stirred to
anger and to action. And the terrorists will remember September 11
as the day their reckoning began," reported CNN.
And this is still just the start, Bush said. He made clear he would
carry the fight into other, unspecified nations with the goal of
denying terrorist networks any safe haven, "no governments to
hide behind, and not even a safe place to sleep."
Vice President Dick Cheney held talks in London with British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, launching a tour of Europe and the Middle East,
widely seen as a first step in building a coalition against Iraq 's
President Saddam Hussein, whom Washington accuses of stockpiling
weapons of mass destruction.
Bush lauded the success of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, despite the
fact that it has still to deliver Bin Laden.
He also explained U.S. deployments or diplomatic offensives across
the world, including in the Philippines, Yemen, and Georgia, as
integral operations in the U.S. drive to carefully dismantle Bin
Laden's network.
Bush led the nation's remembrance as a new survey published Monday
in the Washington Post found that nine out of 10 Americans still
support the Afghan war. Most said the campaign was going well,
despite mounting U.S. casualty figures.
In New York, at 8:46 am (1346 GMT) quiet fell over the crater, where
the World Trade Center once stood, on the moment when the first of
two hijacked airliners sliced into the twin glass-fronted towers,
setting off a deadly inferno.
A second moment of silence shrouded the ruins, or "Ground
Zero" as the area is known, at 9:03, commemorating the moment
when a second fuel-laden plane ignited a fireball in the second
tower.
"Those people we lost would have wanted us to make a better
world, show the terrorists that they can't defeat us," said New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a ceremony in nearby Battery Park.
His predecessor, Rudy Guiliani, who shepherded the traumatized city
through the aftermath of September 11, was equally defiant.
"Ultimately this country will prevail, like it always
has," he said.
As soon as night falls Monday, two enormous shafts of light, called
the Tribute of Light, will illuminate the sky over lower Manhattan,
creating a phantom image of the missing towers.
"Sphere," a 1971 bronze sculpture dug out of the Trade
Center ruins, will be displayed at a newly dedicated memorial in
Battery Park, near Ground Zero.
"For 30 years, it stood in the World Trade Center as a symbol
for peace. On September 11, it was damaged, not destroyed,"
said Bloomberg of the "Sphere"
Just outside Washington at the Pentagon, where 189 people died when
American Airlines Flight 77 destroyed part of the vast U.S. military
headquarters, a wreath was to be laid by a delegation of U.S.
mayors.
The jet blew in a section of the western facade, cut through two and
a half rings of offices, and engulfed the area in flaming aviation
fuel.
Six months on, a feverish rebuilding plan is well advanced, but the
building remains ringed by a huge security net.
A memorial service was also planned at the site, where a fourth
hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently after a heroic
intervention by passengers.
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