Obama, others memorialize fallen of 9/11 attacks
WASHINGTON—At the last of a long day of memorials Sunday marking the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, President Obama noted lives lost in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Iraq and Afghanistan: “May God bless the memory of those we lost, may God bless the United States of America.”
During ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday, the bitter partisanship of recent months was shelved as former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden appeared at the sites where the four planes hijacked by terrorists met a horrific end.
The attacks, the worse in U.S. history, plunged the nation into two wars, forced massive new domestic security measures, threw a spotlight on Osama bin Laden’s brand of radical Muslim fundamentalism and caused inconsolable grief to the families of the 2,819 people who died.
On Sunday the attention was on the families of the victim and survivors. No one on the planes lived. United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 were flown into the World Trade Center towers and the buildings collapsed a short time later. American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into a side of the Pentagon. The passengers on United Flight 93 are regarded as heros because they stormed the cockpit and crash landed the Washington bound plane.
Leaving the White House at 6:19 a.m.—returning at 9:15 p.m.--- Obama and First Lady Michelle traveled to “ground zero” in New York first, than Shanksville, then to the Pentagon for remembrances in the afternoon. Obama’s last remarks on 9-11 were at a service organized by the Washington National Cathedral, moved to the Kennedy Center because the Aug. 23 earthquake damaged the structure.
The chimes of the Cathedral here rang out at the exact times the planes hit ten years ago: 8:46 a.m. and 9:02 a.m. in Manhattan; 9:37 a.m. at the Pentagon and 10:03 a.m. in southeastern Pennsylvania.
In New York, Obama was joined by Bush, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; performers—Paul Simon sang “Sound of Silence,” accompanying himself on guitar-- and from tearful family members of those who perished who told the crowd of their terrible loss.
Obama read from Psalm 46, selecting a passage “that talks of persevering through very difficult challenges and emerging from those challenges stronger,” said principal press secretary Josh Earnest.
Bush –who was president on Sept. 11, 2001—read from a letter President Abraham Lincoln wrote to a Civil War widow.
Obama laid at wreath at the Flight 93 National Memorial and did not speak.
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