America Marks a Grim Anniversary

Cheney's style was more aggressive, as he tossed rhetorical haymakers at critics of the Iraq invasion. "We have no intention," he said, "of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics."

In New York, there was little talk of the war. Recent polls show that 75 percent of the city's residents see no links between the 2001 attacks and the three-year-old war in Iraq. Antiwar sentiment is deeply felt in New York, even by Republicans, polls show.

Jack Lynch went to Ground Zero yesterday with his wife to stand once again in the footprint of those 110-story towers. He recalled searching in that wreckage for the body of his son, Michael, who was a firefighter with Engine 40, Ladder 35, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

"On March 21, 2002, we recovered Michael's body," Lynch said. "His body was entangled with a body of a female. . . . The medical examiner said he was either carrying her or protecting her.

"It was saving grace because we know that Michael . . . died doing something noble."

Lynch wishes he were younger so that he could fight terrorism. But not in Iraq. "Iraq really is the wrong target," he said. "Terrorism is the target and the attitude of those that want to hold us hostage in fear."

Five years out, the emotion is less raw than it was in those first years. One could walk the streets of Manhattan or the District yesterday and sense little amiss. But that impression would be wide off the mark.

In Astoria, Queens, a working-class immigrant community, Joseph Kiss walked beneath the elevated tracks on Broadway. He is a just-retired elevator operator, a white-haired, blue-eyed Croatian immigrant with a gold crucifix. Ask if he still thinks of that day and he nods.

He said his daughter was nearly buried under the wreckage and was rescued several hours after the collapse.

"Every day I think about how I almost lost her, trapped down there in the cement and dust," he said. "I remember calling her and calling, hope she get home.

"I am lucky, though. So many families --" He paused and snapped his fingers. "They look up and they lost the love of their lives."

New York

Lt. Tom Carlstrom, 53, walked one last time in his dress blues along the eastern lip of the gaping hole where this city's two largest towers once stood. He is a New York City firefighter of 25 years' service, or rather he was -- he retired yesterday at 2 p.m.