Pause and prayer for terror victims

Once more,the families gathered at Ground Zero,where 2,749 died,and in Washington and Pennsylvania,paying tribute to the 224 who died there.

Once more,there was an outpouring of grief. Mayor Michael R Bloomberg said the attacks had turned a perfect blue-sky morning into the blackest of nights. He added,We can never unsee what happened here.

President Obama read Psalm 46,which talks about God as our refuge and strength,a very present help in trouble. Former President George W Bush quoted Abraham Lincoln on the casualties in the Civil War as Bush commemorated the casualties of September 11. I pray that our heavenly father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, Bush read,quoting from a letter Lincoln had written in 1864 to a mother whose five sons had died in the war. Sunday was the first time that the two Presidents stood at Ground Zero together.

There were also long moments of silence,first at 8:46 am,the time American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower,and again at 9:03 am,when United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the other tower. Another silence at ground zero and at the Pentagon came at 9:37 am,when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon.

There are no words to ease the pain that you still feel, Secretary of Defense Leon E Panetta told relatives of the 184 people who died there. Another moment of silence,at 10:03 am,marked the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville,Pennsylvania the plane on which passengers tried to fight back,storming the cockpit and attempting to take control of the plane from the terrorists who had hijacked it. There is nothing with which to compare the passenger uprising of 10 years ago, said Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. It has no companion in history in my mind.

The silver bell at ground zero was rung to remember those passengers,as it had been rung through the morning to remember the passengers on the other hijacked airliners and the people inside the twin towers.

The bell tolled again at 10:28 am North Tower falls, read the large letters on video monitors three short words for the destruction of one of the worlds largest buildings. That silence was the longest.

But the vigilant did not pause. On a construction scaffold of One World Trade Centre,on a deck of the World Financial Centre,on the post office building across from the site,police officers with binoculars scanned the crowd below and the sky above.

While September 11 changed the lives of people across the world,this anniversary played out against a different backdrop than the first anniversary,in 2002,or the fifth,in 2006. For the first time,Osama bin Laden was dead. Weve taken the fight to al-Qaeda like never before, Obama declared Saturday.

For the first time,too,there was progress toward rebuilding. Buildings are rising between Church and West Streets in Lower Manhattan,and the National September 11 Memorial will open to the public Monday.JAMES BARRON