The sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks was marked on Tuesday with a low-key ceremony at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan instead of Ground Zero.
NEW YORK: Unlike past commemorations, the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks was marked on Tuesday with a low-key ceremony at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan instead of Ground Zero because of construction there.
The emotional memorial ceremony began at 8.40 am with the sounds of drums and bagpipes and the singing of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’.
“Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg as the ceremony began under dark grey skies. Except for church bells tolling there was four moments of silence at 8:46 am, the exact moment the first plane struck the North Tower.
New York lost 2,700 people when the planes smashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. The city on Tuesday joined families in remembering the victims by reading out their names at a ceremony awash with emotions. Some people in the large subdued crowd held hands as a mark of solidarity, while others wept quietly.
At least 81 per cent of Americans see the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the “most significant historical event” of their lifetime, according to the just-released Zogby International survey. Six years after 9/11 and two American-led wars later in Afghanistan and Iraq, 91 per cent of those surveyed also said they think it is “very likely” an act of terrorism will occur again in the US.
President Bush has, however, pressed the need to stay the course in Iraq and argued that withdrawing American soldiers would allow the Middle East to be taken over by extremists and leave the US vulnerable to new attacks. But Americans are split over whether the war in Iraq is part of the “war on terror” and whether it’s worth the cost.
Top Iraq military commander General David Petraeus told the US Congress that he would send home 2,000 Marines in September and another 5,000 soldiers in mid-December. He indicated that by July 2008, the US would have roughly 1,30,000 soldiers in Iraq, down from the current 1,60,000.
According to recent Congressional Budget Office figures, Bush has spent over $432 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against terror. Over 4,100 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani handled the cleanup of the 16 acres of rubble in the ruins of the World Trade Centre with almost “defiant speed” three months ahead of schedule by May 2002, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has since let things slide. He has recently been criticised strongly for the slow reconstruction at Ground Zero where only one office tower has come up so far out of nine.
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