Americans pay tribute to the nearly 3,000 victims of the 9/11 attacks marking its fifth anniversary with solemn ceremonies.
WASHINGTON: As Americans pay tribute to the nearly 3,000 victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Monday, at the back of everyone's mind will be the thought of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden still roaming free and the rising toll of their soldiers in Iraq.
The Republican administration will be marking the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks, which forever changed the lives and the direction of the American people, with solemn ceremonies.
President George W Bush will lead the commemorations that will take him first to New York and Ground Zero to be followed by simple ceremonies at Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.
The start of the two day ceremonies begins today with a wreath laying at Ground Zero.
The President has asked for flags to be flown at half mast and for people to observe a moment of silence at 8.46 am tomorrow, the exact time when the first of the two jets struck the World Trade Center in New York.
Bush will lay a wreath at Pennsylvania where the third jet crashed after passengers fought with the hijackers and then make his way to the Pentagon.
For the fifth time in his Presidency, Bush will deliver an address to the nation from the White House in the evening in what has been passed off as a non political speech by the White House.
The import of the address is said to be the meaning of 9/11 to America.
Bush used his Saturday radio address to tell Americans that the road ahead was tough but that the country is determined to fight this war against terrorism.
September 11, 2001 has come to signify many things to America and politically it was a defining mark in the Bush Presidency and for US foreign policy that soon found itself echoing in Afghanistan and South Asia and the world over.
But many political analysts have also made the point that this Bush administration literally squandered away the initial goodwill and support in the war on terror by getting into a dubious war overseas in Iraq by making false linkages between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden.
Nearly 2,700 American soldiers have lost their lives in the three year plus war in Iraq, not to speak of the hundreds more who have been wounded or maimed.
What has come to haunt this Republican administration is the fact that Osama bin Laden has not been nabbed in the last five years and the al Qaeda continues to taunt America and its allies not just with occasional video and audio tapes but showing its hand in the bombings that have subsequently occurred in Europe, not to forget the deep role played by the radical terror outfit inside Iraq.
From a President who was immensely popular in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and having approval ratings in the high 80s to the low 90s for his war on terror, Bush's approval has plummeted and now hovering the in the high 30s.
Worse the Republican Party which controls Congress is now apprehensive of its continued hold on Capitol Hill and very much looking at the prospect of losing the House of Representatives or the Senate or both this November 7 elections.
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