National & World

New York

NOW: Above, construction continues on Freedom Tower, center, and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero in New York in this May 2011 photo. Freedom Tower is expected to be completed by January 2014. Construction of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is expect to be finished by September 2012.

THEN: Below, a New York City firefighter looks at the ruins of the World Trade Center at dawn on Sept. 12, 2001, a day after the terrorist attacks.

CAROLYN COLE/LOS ANGELES TIMES/MCT

JIM MACMILLAN/ PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS/MCT

By LEONARD PITTS JR.
McClatchyNewspapers

A decade after the terror, in New York, at the Pentagon, at a field in Pennsylvania and in every nook and cranny of America, we move forward

Suddenly, it has been 10 years.

That’s an amazing realization when you remember how it was back then. Calendars still counted off days; our eyes told us this. Clocks still ticked off seconds; intellectually, we knew. But time — I would have sworn this in a court of law — did not move.

By William O. Beeman

The United States is jubilant over the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. However, it will be some time before history catches up with the mythology that arose around him and the al-Qaeda organization in the past 10 years. Osama bin Laden at the end was far from the looming powerful figure he was made out to be. He had outlived his usefulness both as a bogeyman for the West, and as an Islamic responder to the neo-colonialist forces his organization purported to confront.

 I Love Michigan: Darryl and Erinn Evans along with their son, Dion and daughter, Morgan won the top prize for their video depicting love for Michigan .  Courtesy photo