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"All of a sudden there were people screaming. I saw people jumping out of the building. Their arms were flailing. I stopped taking pictures and started crying."
--Michael Walters, a free-lance photo journalist in Manhattan.
Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger.
--George W. Bush
So what do we do?
Don't overreact some say. We aren't.
We haven't lashed out. No missiles on the first night just for effect.
Don't kill innocent people. We are not the ones who waged war on the innocent. We seek the guilty.
Look for a diplomatic solution. There is no diplomacy with Bin Laden or the Taliban regime.
State an ultimatum and get their response. We stated the ultimatum; they haven't responded.
Understand the causes of terror. Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of 11 September, and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could.
The action we take will be proportionate; targeted; we will do all we humanly can to avoid civilian casualties. But understand what we are dealing with. Listen to the calls of those passengers on the planes. Think of the children on them, told they were going to die.
Think of the cruelty beyond our comprehension as amongst the screams and the anguish of the innocent, those hijackers drove at full throttle planes laden with fuel into buildings where tens of thousands worked.
They have no moral inhibition on the slaughter of the innocent. If they could have murdered not 7,000 but 70,000 does anyone doubt they would have done so and rejoiced in it?
There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror.
Just a choice: defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.
--British Prime Minister Tony Blair
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