Women weep at a ceremony to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York.

Four moments of silence were observed to mark the times jetliners crashed into the twin towers and the skyscrapers crumbled to the ground.

The task of reading the names of the 2,749 trade center victims fell this year to their husbands, wives and partners, who personalized the roll call with heartbreaking tributes to the loves of their lives.

President George W. Bush, under fire since a Sept. 8 Senate report claimed Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat, not an ally, laid a wreath at the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, field where United Flight 93 crashed.

"America did not ask for this war, and every American wishes it were over," Bush said later from the White House.

Bush defended the war in Iraq though he acknowledged that Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

He said Saddam's regime, while lacking weapons of mass destruction, was a clear threat that posed "a risk the world could not afford to take."

"Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone," the president said. "They will not leave us alone. They will follow us."

The Japan Times Weekly: Sept. 16, 2006
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