NEW YORK: Remembrance services will be held in the United States to mark the eighth anniversary of the hijacked plane attacks of 11 September, 2001.

Nearly 3,000 people died when the four planes crashed in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

President Barack Obama will speak at the Pentagon site and Americans have been

encouraged to contribute to a national day of service.

US soldiers in Afghanistan completed a 9.11-km run to mark the day.

Traditional ceremonies including moments of silence and the reading of the names of the victims will take place at the sites of the attacks.

President Obama will join defence secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon, where 184 people died, to meet members of victims’ families and lay a wreath. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president would “speak about what the day means and the sacrifices of thousands, not just at the Pentagon, but in Pennsylvania and certainly and most obviously in New York”. Yesterday, Obama issued a statement urging Americans to take part in community service while also vowing to

“apprehend all those who perpetrated these heinous crimes, seek justice for those who were killed, and defend against all threats to our national

security”. Vice-President Joe Biden will attend the New York ceremony. There will be four moments of silence there — one each for the times the two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers and for the collapse of the buildings.

Volunteers who helped in the aftermath of the attacks will join family members in reading the more than 2,700 names of the victims.

The Ground Zero area remains a building site, despite plans for a memorial, a museum and five new skyscrapers.

Delays caused by political arguments and financial and legal disputes have left huge question marks over the entire project, he says. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will speak at the site of the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The names of the 40 passengers and crew will be read to mark the time of the crash — 1003. In a break with tradition, the anniversary has also been designated a national day of service. Americans have been encouraged to contribute their labour and time in memory of the victims. Conservation projects, aid packages for serving soldiers and the simple offering of work for free are among the undertakings made by members of the public.

Why is Osama bin Laden a failure?

NEW YORK: He may have eluded justice and the long reach of the world’s most powerful military force; his followers may (and probably will) strike again at some point in the future, near or distant; but history’s verdict on Osama bin Laden has been in for some time, now: Al-Qaeda failed.

The 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington 0151 like those that preceded it in East Africa in 1998 and those that followed in London, Madrid, Bali and other places — were tactical successes, in that they managed to kill hundreds of innocents, grab the world’s headlines and briefly dominate the nightmares of Western policy makers. But the strategy of which those attacks formed part has proven to be fundamentally flawed. Terrorism departs from the rules of war by deliberately targeting the innocent, but it shares the basic motive force of conventional warfare — “the pursuit of politics by other means, “ as Clausewitz wrote. The purpose of the 9/11 attacks was not simply to kill Americans; they formed part of Bin Laden’s strategy to launch a global Islamist revolution aimed at ending US influence in Muslim nations, overthrowing regimes there allied with Washington, and putting al-Qaeda at the head of a global Islamist insurgency. — AP