New York Times: Remember the ordinary, if you can. Remember how normal New York City seemed at sunrise yesterday, as beautiful a morning as ever dawns in early September. The polls had opened for a primary election, and if the day seemed unusual in any way, that was the reason - the collective awareness that the night would be full of numbers. Everyone was preoccupied, in just the way we usually call innocence.
And by 10:30 am all that had gone. Lower Manhattan had become an ashen shell of itself, all but a Pompeii under the impact of a terrorist attack involving two airliners that crashed into the World Trade Centre. In Washington, a third plane had plunged into the Pentagon. The president was for a long while out of sight, his plane seeming to hop around the middle of the country in search of security. For all Americans, the unimaginable became real.
Washington Post: The horrific terrorist attacks yesterday in New York and Washington will rank as one of the greatest calamities in American history, and will confront the United States with one of its most demanding challenges. Not since December 7 1941 has the US homeland sustained such an aggression. The nation responded then without panic but with iron determination to defend itself and punish the aggressors. The response today must be as decisive - to the mass murderers who planned and carried out the attack, and to any nation or nations that gave them shelter and encouragement.
San Francisco Chronicle: The attack calls for swift and precise retribution along with all our sympathy for the dead and injured. The heart of America's greatest city was devastated. The country's military nerve centre, the Pentagon, was heavily damaged. At least four airliners were commandeered and crashed by murderous hijackers - including a commercial plane from Newark to San Francisco. It appears that thousands of Americans were killed.
The attack was as well orchestrated as it was cowardly...Today had the wrenching feel of the beginning of war. A war with an enemy that lacked the courage to identify itself.
The Village Voice: The assaults should force Bush to become more active in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All through the campaign and his first months in office, Bush has insisted the US cannot force peace on the region. Now it appears he cannot keep peace in his own backyard.
Seattle Times: No living American could remember a war at home. Now we can ... Already, terrorism is driving splinters between us.