President Barack Obama vowed Friday the United States would never falter in its battle against al-Qaeda and called for new national resolve on the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Fearful memories of the day briefly sprang back to life a short time later when a U.S. Coast Guard training exercise set off what turned out to be unfounded reports that a suspicious boat had been fired on the Potomac, not far from the Pentagon.
Obama lamented that passing time had not dulled the pain of the loss of nearly 3,000 lives in a "terrible instant," as he led national commemorations of the world’s worst terrorist attack for the first time as president.
Pursuit of al-Qaeda
"Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still," Obama said at a ceremony at a memorial at the Pentagon military headquarters, which was hit by a hijacked plane.
"In defense of our nation, we will never waver," Obama said on a rain-swept day so different from the crisp September morning when al-Qaeda hijackers showered death and destruction on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
"In pursuit of al-Qaeda and its extremist allies, we will never falter," said Obama, who has taken a strategic decision to escalate the increasingly unpopular war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan.
"Mindful that the work of protecting America is never finished, we will do everything in our power to keep America safe," he said.
Obama, who opened a day of national ceremonies by observing a moment’s silence at the White House, said that "eight Septembers have come and gone" since the attacks, but grief still lingered.
"No turning of the season can diminish the pain and the loss of that day. No passage of time and no dark skies can ever dull the meaning of this moment."
The president, who is locked in a fierce partisan struggle with his political opponents on issues like health care, also recalled the unity and common purpose that took over America in the days after the attacks.
Obama spoke to a crowd of relatives of the 184 people killed at the Pentagon when a hijacked airliner turned one side of the building into a fireball, and laid a wreath at the memorial.
Ceremonies
Ceremonies were also being held in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field where a fourth plane crashed short of its target.
It was the first time that Obama, who was driving to work as a state senator in Illinois when he learned of the attacks on the radio, had led the national remembrance ceremonies as president.
At New York’s Ground Zero, all that is left of the two huge towers that were toppled in wave of fire and debris by fuel-laden planes, volunteers read the names of the 2,752 people killed in the strike at the heart of U.S. might.
One U.S. cable news network, MSNBC, marked the anniversary by replaying the terrifying minute-by-minute video of the first moments of the attacks when planes hit the world Trade Center.
The Pentagon memorial is the only major official monument to the victims of the Sept.11 attacks, with plans for similar sites in New York and Pennsylvania held up in part by financial and legal wrangling.
In a message carried on the front page of the New York Daily News, Obama declared "we are all New Yorkers" and that the attacks "will be forever seared in the consciousness of our nation."
The president wrote that his controversial and increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan was part of his strategy "to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11."