The US Congress has overwhelmingly given President George W. Bush the tools to strike back against those responsible for the terror attacks in New York and Washington which left thousands dead or missing.
The US House of Representatives voted late Friday 420-1 authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force," hours after the US Senate passed a similar resolution by a unanimous 98-0 vote.
The vote came as Americans and people around the world came together in prayer and song in candlelight vigils and multi-denominational services to remember the victims of the worst terrorist attacks in history.
Airborne suicide missions against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon military headquarters here have left some 5,000 dead and missing -- more than twice as many who died in the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Troops and armored vehicles are stationed at strategic points around the nation's capital for the first time in recent memory as fighter jets sweep overhead and naval warships guard the coasts of the country.
"This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger," said Bush at an overflowing memorial service in Washington's National Cathedral.
"Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," he said, rallying the American people for what he has said will be a sustained war against terrorists and the states harboring them.
Later in New York, on his first tour of the devastated site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center used to stand, Bush was greeted by hundreds of rescue workers with repeated chants of "USA! USA!"
A third airliner plowed into the gigantic Pentagon military headquarters near Washington, rendering one third of it unusable, and a fourth -- presumably intended for the White House -- crashed in western Pennsylvania.
"The people who knocked these buildings down will hear [from] all of us soon," Bush told the workers who chanted "USA, USA" as he visited the mounds of rubble in cool and drizzly weather that slowed rescue efforts.
Bush has already declared a national emergency and given the military the authority it needs to call 50,000 reservists to active duty, 35,000 of whom will likely be mobilized in the coming days.
On what was, by presidential decree, a national day of prayer and remembrance, the United States moved to a combat footing for what Bush promises is the "first war of the 21st century" as signs mount the first target could be Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who harbor and refuse to hand over bin Laden, seemed convinced they will be the first targets.
On Saturday they warned that their fighters would retaliate with force if any neighboring country provided assistance to the United States for an attack on Afghanistan, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.
Earlier, Secretary of State Colin Powell stepped up pressure on the Taliban.
"To the extent that you are providing havens to organizations such as the one headed by Osama bin Laden... you need to understand you cannot separate your activities from the activities of perpetrators," he warned.
Russia Saturday gave implicit backing for a possible US intervention in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in Yerevan.
A worldwide probe into the attacks pushed ahead on Friday as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation released the identities of the 19 hijackers who are suspected of having carried out the attacks.
A possible first breakthrough in the investigation occurred when an unidentified individual was arrested as a material witness in connection with this week's terrorist attacks, New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik told reporters.
FBI chief Robert Mueller said agents were chasing more than 36,000 leads in the investigation.
Four of the eight so-called black boxes from the crashes have now been recovered: late on Friday, the cockpit voice recorder from the United Airlines flight to crash in Pennsylvania was found at the site.
Investigators have already found the flight data recorder of that airplane, and the two "black boxes" of the plane that plowed into the Pentagon.
Among Americans, the attacks have stirred a mix of emotions as they tried to resume something resembling a normal life.
US flags appeared en masse on highway overpasses, city buses and in store windows, while on thousands of billboards three simple words appeared: "God Bless America."
Workers sported red, white and blue ribbons, placed a US flag on their desks, or attached the national colors to their briefcases and purses.
Across the nation, tens of thousands attended inter-denominational services in churches, synagogues and mosques, and dotted their lawns and streets with candles in solemn remembrance.
In Chicago, worshipper Anne Reusche, one of 10,000 at a downtown church, said that at one point during the gathering, "you could have heard a pin drop.
"There was not a sound, you could hear the wind blow through. It was unbelievable” -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
