Marking what he called simply a “sad anniversary,” President Bush intends a deliberately low-key Sept. 11 of sober, quiet remembrances. He planned no formal remarks or appearances at official memorial ceremonies and was not leaving Washington.
The president's schedule for the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks began with an early morning prayer service at St. John’s Episcopal Church, only a block from the White House.
In brief remarks afterwards, the president said the day should be dedicated to prayer. “We remember lives lost, we remember the heroic deeds, we remember the compassion and the decency of our fellow citizens on that terrible day,” he said.
Bush and his wife, Laura, then went back across the street, to join White House staff members on the South Lawn at 8:46 a.m. to observe with a moment of silence the time when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City.
In the afternoon, the president, still accompanied by the first lady, was to travel a few miles to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for a private session with soldiers being treated there for wounds suffered in Iraq.
The White House even scotched for Thursday the normal daily on-camera briefing with Bush’s chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, in observance of Patriot Day, the name given to Sept. 11 by presidential proclamation.
It is a time, the president said Wednesday, to honor the victims’ families, those who still “feel a grief that does not end.” It is also a time, he said, for the rest of the country to remember how it “felt the anger and the sense of loss” on that day two years ago that 3,016 people died in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania at the hands of terrorist hijackers.
About the families
The president’s recognition of the anniversary this year is markedly more subdued than last, when he participated in memorial events at all three crash sites and engaged in tearful embraces with family members. Aides said the new approach was in keeping with the president’s view that the day now should be solely about the families.
So instead of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney was representing the administration in New York. However, at the request of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who worried about the security requirements that come with a Cheney appearance, the vice president was attending only an afternoon service honoring fallen Port Authority employees, not the morning World Trade Center observances.
“The last thing we want to do is be disruptive of any remembrance ceremony that is occurring,” McClellan said.
A ceremony at Shanksville, Pa., where one of the four hijacked planes crashed into the ground, was being attended by Interior Secretary Gail Norton. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was presiding over a wreath laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, not far from the Pentagon, another of the Sept. 11 crash sites.
Most of the Democratic presidential candidates were putting their campaigns on hold for the anniversary, choosing to take part in memorial services or simply staying out of the public spotlight for the day.
The lone exception was Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who planned to address the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on the war on terror two years later.
Aides said any remarks Thursday by Bush would come only extemporaneously.
Future protection
On Wednesday at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., he reflected on Sept. 11, 2001, and outlined his administration’s program to protect the nation against future attacks in a speech the White House regarded as his main public comments on the anniversary.
“The memories of Sept. 11 will never leave us,” he said. “We will not forget the burning towers and the last phone calls and the smoke over Arlington. We will not forget the rescuers who ran toward danger and the passengers who rushed the hijackers. We will not forget the men and women who went to work on a typical day, and never came home. We will not forget the death of school children who were on a school trip.”
On Sept. 11, he said, the nation’s prayers will be with those families who “will be thinking of one name in particular, a person they still love and deeply miss.”
But along with shared grief, Bush also promised to stay on the offensive, and to be successful, against terrorists who he said continue to plan new attacks.
On a new audiotape broadcast on an Arab television station Wednesday, a speaker purported to be Osama bin Laden praised the “great damage to the enemy” that was inflicted on Sept. 11.
Bush said: “We will never forget the servants of evil who plotted the attacks. And we will never forget those who rejoiced at our grief and our mourning.”