MSRNC: "Bush lets silence fill Ground Zero"

[leftchick]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14771810 /

President George W. Bush has spoken 22,000 words in the past week in a series of speeches on the "war on terror" but on Sunday he let a carefully posed silence remind Americans of September 11 2001 as he laid a wreath at Ground Zero.

Faced with criticism from Democrats that he was politicising the day, the White House said Mr Bush would make no prepared remarks on Monday, as he marks the fifth anniversary of the attacks with a meeting of emergency personnel in New York and holds further moments of silence at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The return to Ground Zero will revive images of the day that Mr Bush's presidency, and his personality, were transformed, and whose "bullhorn moment" on top of the smouldering rubble became an enduring image of a resolute leader. Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, denied, however, that the aim was to evoke those memories or "draw on some atavistic sense of nostalgia about the date".

Even so, Mr Bush who has let the last two anniversaries pass without much fanfare, has spent the past two weeks framing the debate on the midterm congressional elections in quiet but clear political tones.

In the speeches he has used every opportunity to cast himself and the Republican party as the best hope to secure the US from future attack.



This one makes me ....



New York Police create an honor cordon during a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush at a ceremony to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, at the site of the World Trade Center in New York September 10, 2006. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES)