Frank Lautenberg: “today marks a time in America that must always in the future be remembered. It cannot be forgotten, because it was the…”

“today marks a time in America that must always in the future be remembered. It cannot be forgotten, because it was the worst day on American soil in modern times. The worst day. It was the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, Shanksville, PA, and the Pentagon. These attacks put together such a horrific toll, we must constantly be reminded. And we are every day of the year. We are reminded how terrible this attack was. It was unimaginable, the pictures that we saw on TV. If anyone turned on the TV, on almost every station there was a picture of the strike at the World Trade Center, an airplane running into it. And the first thing that was thought--and unfortunately I was out of the country when this took place; I heard about it on the radio, and saw people in the country I was in weeping for this great America. We thought it was an accidental thing. We are not far from an airport, Teterboro Airport in New Jersey--maybe that it was an errant pilot, probably a single-engine airplane. Nothing could have been further from the truth. This was a designed attack on this building with all of the particulars that the terrorists had to have: How long would it take for the steel to melt, where is the best place to strike, what can the consequences of an attack such as this be? Unimaginable, as I earlier said. In my home State of New Jersey, we lost the second highest number of lives of any State in the country.…”