Obama leads US in remembrance of 9/11, urges vigilance

WASHINGTON, United States - President Barack Obama led the United States Friday in remembrance of 9/11, urging Americans to remain vigilant of "terrorist" threats on the 14th anniversary of the attacks.

Although US forces "have made enormous strides in degrading the core Al-Qaeda," the terror group responsible for the deadly strikes on US soil, "we are well aware of the fact that those threats still exist out there," Obama said in a speech broadcast live to US service members worldwide.

"Both in Iraq and in Syria, in Afghanistan, in North Africa, what we're very clear about is we have significant threats coming from terrorist organizations and the terrorist ideology," Obama warned from Fort Meade, Maryland.

Earlier in the day, at 8:46 am (1246 GMT), a bell chimed three times on the South Lawn of the White House to mark the moment when Flight 11, piloted by Al-Qaeda operatives, careened into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

Blue skies and the hum of jet planes landing and taking off at nearby National Airport evoked that day of tragedy.

Obama and his wife Michelle stood solemnly beneath a US flag at half-staff, bowed their heads and marked a moment of silence.

The first couple were flanked by White House chefs, gardeners and housekeepers, as well as national security staff.

Evidence of 9/11's impact was everywhere -- from Obama's stars and stripes lapel pin, now ubiquitous among US politicians, to the presence of Lisa Monaco, his Homeland Security Advisor -- a post that did not exist before the attacks.

Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001 at Ground Zero in New York, at the Pentagon and aboard a hijacked airliner that went down in rural Pennsylvania.

"We honor those we lost. We salute all who serve to keep us safe. We stand as strong as ever," Obama later said in a post to social media.

Almost a decade and a half later, Osama bin Laden is dead and the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq has ebbed, but Americans' sense of loss and shock has receded little.

In New York, police and relatives of those killed in the World Trade Center read the names of the victims at Ground Zero, now the site of the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

At the Pentagon, dozens of family members watched as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter placed a large wreath of white flowers.

"They did not and could not take from us what defines us," Carter said.

- 'Forever war' -

As commemorations across the eastern United States replicated the timeline and solemn geography of September 11, 2001, there was also a reminder that the threat posed by Islamist terror groups remains both clear and present.

"The war that began fourteen years ago still rages around the world today," said Senator John McCain.

"With the forces of radical Islam once again ascendant in the Middle East and North Africa, we must aspire to recapture the spirit of unity that marked our public life in the wake of the 9/11 attacks," he said.

The United States must, he said, "devote ourselves with firm resolve to the lasting defeat of the enemies that attacked us that day, and who seek to attack us still today."

Counter-terror analysts were closely watching for threats from Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group.

In 2012, a September 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey said there were "not any specific or credible threats" this year, but that authorities were on alert.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

With World Trade site largely rebuilt, New York marks September 11

NEW YORK - Until a few months ago, the part of New York City where crowds will gather on Thursday morning to mark the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States had been mostly fenced off to the public.

This year, for perhaps the first time since the attacks, a sense of normalcy and openness has taken root in the city blocks where two airliners hijacked by militants from al Qaeda crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Rebuilding efforts at the site, where 2,753 people died, are nearing completion. The area, by turns a smoldering grave and an off-limits construction site for more than a decade, is now increasingly reconnected with the surrounding streets.

Against that backdrop, politicians, families of those who died in the attacks and other dignitaries will gather on Thursday to observe moments of silence and hear recitations of nearly 3,000 victims' names. It has become an annual ritual.

Similar ceremonies will also be held in Washington, where a hijacked plane plowed into the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where another hijacked plane crashed.

In New York, it is the first commemoration ceremony since the opening of the 9/11 museum and the adjoining repository for unidentified human remains at the site. That is an important milestone for families of the victims, officials say.

"For the first time this year, because the museum opened in May, family members will be able to visit the museum as part of the commemoration," Michael Frazier, a museum spokesman, said.

While lower Manhattan may look and feel different this year, the external threat to the United States represented by the 9/11 attacks still weighs. Islamic State, a militant group that began as an offshoot of al Qaeda, is viewed by Washington as an increasing danger.

The Islamist group, which released videos of its fighters beheading two American hostages, has even revived fears of an attack on American soil.

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to announce his strategy to fight Islamic State on Wednesday evening, about 12 hours before the Sept. 11 commemorations begin.

Although the reconstruction has been plagued by delays, two of the new skyscrapers built around the site of the fallen twin towers are now open, while 1 World Trade Center, the tallest skyscraper in the Western hemisphere, is due to open later this year.

Thousands of tourists pose for photographs each day around the two memorial waterfalls that mark the footprints of the towers, set in a paved plaza dotted with trees, before lining up to visit the subterranean museum about the attack.

Critics have said that the plaza, with its unusually prohibitive rules for a city public space and deliberate lack of garbage cans, is of little use to people who live or work in the area.

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, described the plaza as "formal, gigantic, impersonal, flat, built to awe, something for tourists."

Obama is expected to speak at the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, during a private ceremony on Thursday morning for relatives of the people killed in the attack on the building.

The only ceremony open to the general public is at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania, which marks the site where one of the four airliners crashed.

The Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian award, honoring the passengers and crew who were aboard that flight, will go on public display for the first time, the National Park Service said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Remains of some 9/11 victims dumped at landfill - US

WASHINGTON - Partial remains from some victims of the September 11 attacks were dumped in a landfill, the Pentagon revealed Tuesday for the first time, issuing a report that exposed years of bungling at the US military's most important mortuary.

The portions of remains that ended up at a landfill came from the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and from a hijacked airliner that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on 9/11, according to the report by an independent panel.

The revelation came from a review of the troubled mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, which has been blamed for mishandling the remains of some troops killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The military had acknowledged last year that some portions of remains of fallen soldiers at the Dover mortuary in Delaware had been incinerated and sent to a Virginia landfill, a practice that angered military families and led to a new policy.

Starting in 2008, the military decided to dispose of unidentified cremated remains at sea.

But the review released Tuesday said "several portions of remains from the Pentagon attack and the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, crash site" also were taken to an unidentified landfill.

"These cremated portions were then placed in sealed containers that were provided to a biomedical waste disposal contractor," it said.

The report contradicts a 2011 US Air Force account which said there were no records that showed how remains at Dover were handled before 2003.

Details about the 9/11 remains were mentioned in passing as background material in the report, which focused on how to fix management problems at the troubled mortuary.

Retired Army general John Abizaid, who led the review, told reporters it was unclear how many partial remains of September 11 victims were involved.

"I don't know that there's a way to find out," he told reporters.

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley later on Tuesday said he was not aware that some remains of 9/11 victims had been taken to a landfill, saying: "This is new information to me."

But Abizaid said he had briefed all the armed services on his report's findings.

The coroner in Pennsylvania's Somerset County who oversaw the recovery of remains from hijacked Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he was surprised to hear that any remains could have been taken to a landfill.

"Where they would have gotten those remains I have no idea," Wallace Miller was quoted as saying. The only remains sent out were taken to a military institute of pathology in Quantico, Virginia for DNA testing, he said.

The review also contained other revelations of botched management at Dover, with officials raising concerns about problems at the mortuary as early as 2002.

A May 2002 memo referred to worrisome "tracking problems" with remains, and a 2005 investigation confirmed that "human remains were misrouted in a fashion constituting dereliction of duty," according to the report.

In 2006, the remains of victims killed in the crash of a naval training T-29 aircraft were disposed of as "medical waste" instead of a group burial, it said.

The Air Force in 2008 had to pay a $25,000 settlement to the wife of a Marine for "mental anguish and medical costs" due to the loss of the Marine's personal effects, while in 2009 the mortuary faced allegeations of "fraud."

Donley said the Air Force had accepted "responsibility and culpability" over the blunders at Dover mortuary but was now working to ensure no more mistakes occur, Donley said.

"Our focus is from here forward," he said.

An investigation last year found "gross mismanagement" at the facility, with body parts lost in two cases and remains of others mishandled. The findings came after three Air Force employees raised alarm bells over the facility and after an independent probe criticized the Air Force for initially punishing the whistle blowers.

The review issued Tuesday called for bolstering oversight at Dover, restructuring the chain of command overseeing the mortuary, expanding training and hiring more staff members.

It remained unclear Tuesday if the Air Force would sack any of those responsible for the errors at Dover.

article source: interaksyon.com