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Obama visits NY to honor bin Laden victims

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-05 21:21

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama honors Osama bin Laden's September 11 victims on Thursday, laying a wreath at the site of the World Trade Center, where the slain terrorist leader changed the course of history in a day of carnage that shook the United States and killed nearly 3,000 people.

Just days after US Navy SEALs stormed bin Laden's palatial hideout in Pakistan, killing him with a bullet to the brain, the president travels to New York for what will be a somber ceremony of remembrance.

The president will meet with families who lost loved ones and the brave first-responders who tried to help as the World Trade Center's twin towers became infernos after bin Laden's terrorist teams flew hijacked jetliners into the buildings on a clear September morning nearly a decade ago.

He makes the journey a day after rejecting calls for him to release death photos of bin Laden as proof he was killed in the lightning airborne raid on his $1 million compound. The president said he would not risk giving propaganda to extremists or gloat by publicizing gory photos of the terrorist leader.

To those who doubt, Obama said, "You will not see bin Laden walking on this earth again."

His government, meanwhile, insisted the shooting of an unarmed bin Laden during a daring raid in Pakistan was lawful and in national self-defense. Officials who were briefed on the operation told The Associated Press that the Navy SEALs who stormed bin Laden's compound shot and killed him after they saw him appear to lunge for a weapon.

Obama's New York visit is intended to have a measured tone _ not a bookend to President George W. Bush's rousing visit in the days after the attack when he stood in the rubble and promised vengeance.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called it a "cathartic moment for the American people."

Obama does not have planned remarks during his trip. Yet it is likely Obama will make comments during his time at the September 11 memorial, where he will lay a wreath.

Obama will visit a bustling construction site that bears little resemblance to the pit that became ground zero in the months after the attack. The emerging skyscraper informally known as Freedom Tower is more than 60 stories high now. Mammoth fountains and reflecting pools mark the footprints of the fallen twin towers.

Thousands of people climbed street signs and waved flags in celebration after hearing that bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on Monday, which was Sunday night in New York.

Jim Riches, whose firefighter son was among those killed at the World Trade Center, planned to meet with the president.

"I just want to thank him, hug him and thank him and shake his hand," Riches said. "Father to father. Thank you for doing this for me."

The White House said Obama will meet privately with families of those killed in the attacks and with the emergency workers who rushed to help.

The president must also handle the moment without being seen as celebrating bin Laden's death or aiming to boost his own standing in victory.

"The president is coming here because this is the place where you can really feel what happened that day," said Joelle Tripoul, a tourist visiting Manhattan from Marseilles, France. "And I think he wants to come to say that bin Laden's death marks the end of this stage of our human journey after 9/11."

Al-Qaida terrorists hijacked jets and flew two of them into the World Trade Center's twin towers. Both buildings collapsed, trapping thousands inside and claiming the lives of firefighters and others who had rushed to help them. A third plane slammed into the Pentagon. Officials have speculated that a fourth plane was heading for the US Capitol or perhaps even the White House when it crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers overcame the al-Qaida crew that had taken over the aircraft.

A few days later, Bush stood in the wreckage and spoke through a bullhorn. When one worker yelled, "I can't hear you," the president responded: "I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people _ and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

All these years later, Obama said this is no time to gloat. "We don't need to spike the football," he said in an interview with CBS television during which he announced he would keep bin Laden's death photos sealed.

Obama invited Bush to join him Thursday, but the former president declined.

Heightened security put in place in response to the killing of bin Laden will remain for Obama's visit. Police officials said there are no specific threats against the city but also say they assume bin Laden's "disciples" might try to avenge his death with a terror attack.

"The ceremony will provide some closure to a horrific event," said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, who was invited by the White House to attend Obama's ground zero event.

Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Sam Hananel in Washington and Verena Dobnik and Colleen Long and videojournalist Bonny Ghosh in New York contributed to this report.