This is why we're at war, Bush says

Thousands of mourners filled the pit where the trade towers once stood.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
NEW YORK -- As night fell on a mourning nation, twin towers of white light beamed brighter into the sky above ground zero, capping the emotional second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"Tribute in Light" returned after a 17-month hiatus Thursday night, a ghostly reminder of the day hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.
"It makes you look skyward," said Melannie Dunn, 34, of Manhattan, as she gazed at the tribute. "There is something hopeful about directing your thoughts upward."
The lights in Battery Park City concluded a national day of mourning, from Staten Island to the White House, from Massachusetts to Hawaii. In New York, 200 children led the mourning, showing extraordinary poise as they read the enormous list of victims for 2 1/2 hours.
Outside the White House, President Bush and his staff stood silently on the South Lawn at 8:46 a.m. -- the moment of impact of the first hijacked plane. Vice President Dick Cheney attended a memorial at the Riverside Church in Manhattan for 84 workers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owner of the trade center complex.
The ceremonies came as the federal government warned of possible Al-Qaida attacks against Americans overseas in connection with the anniversary, but the day passed without incident. A videotape of Osama bin Laden emerged a day earlier.
Looking to the future
In ceremonies throughout Washington, Bush administration officials used the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks Thursday as a call for Americans to remember why the nation is fighting a global war on terror.
Bush commemorated the day at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, visiting troops wounded in the Iraq war -- the latest campaign in what he describes as a war to head off future terrorist attacks.
"We're fighting this war on a lot of fronts, the major front of which is now in Iraq," the president said after visiting the troops. "The only way to deal with [terrorists] is to find them and bring them to justice, and that's what the United States -- and a lot of other countries working with the United States -- will continue to do."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, honoring those killed and injured during the attack on the Pentagon two years ago, asked Americans to remember not only those who died Sept. 11, 2001, but also to recall those soldiers killed since then in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Let us recommit ourselves to their cause and to our mission: the triumph of freedom over tyranny," Rumsfeld said during a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, where rows of simple white headstones seem to stretch endlessly, a testament to the cost of war.
Bush launched the war on terror shortly after the attacks. The first target was Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which provided a home base to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida terror network.
Remembrance
Nearly two years later, Thursday's ceremonies reminded the nation what started it all.
The lower Manhattan memorial lights were first sent into the sky March 11, 2002, to mark six months since the terrorist attack that claimed 2,792 victims and brought down the twin 110-story towers. Each year on the anniversary of the attack, the lights -- symbols of the felled skyscrapers -- will go on for one day.
"It will get very emotional as the night gets darker and the lights get brighter ... and it shows that we will never forget," Gov. George Pataki said after watching the lights rise into the sky at dusk Thursday.
In Washington, a moment of silence was observed at the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. for the 184 victims killed by the plane crash there. And at an isolated field near Shanksville, Pa., bells tolled for the 40 people killed aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
Children's voices
On Thursday morning, thousands of mourners filled the pit where the trade center once stood. Two by two, young relatives of the victims stepped to the microphone -- sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, grandsons and granddaughters.
The 200 children mournfully recited the names of those who died at the World Trade Center, and each ended with a salute.
"Our father, James Patrick Berger," said his sons, 8-year-old Alexander and 10-year-old Nicholas, their small voices suddenly immense as they echoed across ground zero.
The families appeared in various sad permutations: New York Police Department Sgt. Michael Curtin was represented by his three daughters. Kristen Canillas, 12, stood alongside 8-year-old Christopher Cardinali; both had lost a grandparent.
The readers offered poignant messages to their lost relatives, their emotions laid bare before a crowd that held aloft pictures of the victims, dabbed tears from their eyes and laid flowers in temporary reflecting pools representing the towers.
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