President Obama honored the victims of 9/11 on its 12th anniversary at the Pentagon Wednesday, speaking around 9:37 a.m., when the building was hit in the attack.
“We pray for the memory of all those taken from us–nearly 3,000 innocent souls,” Obama said. “Our hearts still ache for the futures snatched away, the lives that might have been…They left this Earth. They slipped from our grasp. But it was written, ‘What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.’”
Before giving the speech at the Pentagon, the president led a moment of silence at the White House with Vice President Biden, Jill Biden, and Michelle Obama.
“We pray for all those who have stepped forward in those years of war,” Obama said at the Pentagon, “diplomats who serve in dangerous posts, as we saw this day last year in Benghazi, intelligence professionals, often unseen and unheralded who protect us in every way–our men and women in uniform who defend this country that we love.”
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell played an extended clip of Obama’s remarks in the Rewrite Wednesday.
Evan Puschak