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Today, the president and a crowd of 16,000 dedicated the first permanent memorial to the nearly 3,000 victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“The day will come when most Americans have no living memory of the events of September the 11th. When they visit this memorial, they will learn that the 21st century began with a great struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror,” Bush said. “They will learn that this generation of Americans met its duty: We did not tire, we did not falter, and we did not fail.” After addressing an audience estimated at up to 16,000, Bush and his entourage left the podium and approached the memorial site on the western side of the Pentagon, while uniformed men and women from all services stood at attention behind each bench. Applause erupted as the military personnel began pulling off royal blue covers from the benches.
After a ceremony for friends and relatives of the 184 victims who died at the Pentagon, the memorial opened to the public this evening. Click through the beautiful pictures at Flickr to see what visitors saw as the sun set on this day, a day almost as beautiful as that one seven years ago, before the sky was ripped open and our lives changed forever.
