Just days after the raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistani compound, President Obama returned to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, where he participated in a silent wreath-laying ceremony and told a fire station crushed by losses on 9/11 that "when we say we will never forget, we mean what we say."
The president made his remarks while visiting the "Pride of Midtown" firehouse (Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9), which lost 15 men on 9/11.
Visiting the station, Obama told the firefighters: "You're always going to have a president and an administration who's got your back."
He later visited the First Precinct police station in Lower Manhattan, where he brought home bin Laden's death for the officers. "What we did on Sunday is directly connected to what you do every day," he said.
Obama's visit to New York on Thursday is a bookend to President George W. Bush's famous bullhorn-at-Ground-Zero vow that the people who knocked down the World Trade Center buildings would hear America.
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As high-profile as his visit is, Obama kept a light touch. Before he laid a wreath at the 9/11 memorial, he walked down a line of police officers to shake their hands, and then laid the wreath on its stand.