Bush tours Pentagon devastation; casualty figures remain unclear
As President Bush toured the Pentagon and visited military service members and Defense civilians involved in search and rescue efforts, Pentagon officials continued to hope that casualty figures in the terrorist attack on the building Tuesday would be lower than initailly reported.
10:30 PM--As President Bush toured the Pentagon and visited military service members and Defense civilians involved in search and rescue efforts, Pentagon officials continued to hope that casualty figures in the terrorist attack on the building Tuesday would be lower than initailly reported.
Defense officials declined to speculate on the number of casualties, but indicated the tally could be considerably lower than 800, a figure Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher had floated earlier in a ballpark estimate of potential deaths.
After conducting initial reconnaissance at the site where a civil aircraft plunged into the Pentagon, Plaugher had said casualties could range anywhere from 100 to 800 dead.
The force of the crash and the intense heat from the resulting fire made in highly unlikely there were any survivors in the initial impact area of the crash. Firefighters used listening devices Tuesday night and found no signs of life, according to Pentagon officials.
Wednesday afternoon, firefighters finally succeeded in extinguishing fires at the Pentagon that were started by the terrorist attack.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Bush said he was both saddened and angered by the attacks on both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City.
"Our country will not be cowed by terrorists, by people who don't share the same values we share, by people who are willing to destroy people's lives because we embrace freedom," he said. "The nation mourns, but the government goes on, the country functions. We're on high alert for any possible activity." The Pentagon has set up temporary mortuary facilities at the complex's remote delivery facility. The Pentagon's remote delivery facility was built last year as a safety measure for inbound and outbound Pentagon packages. At an impromptu press conference Wednesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "From everything we currently know, the [casualty] estimate widely reported is considerably high." Rumsfeld declined to elaborate on what the Defense Department knows regarding missing personnel. Each of the services has been compiling rosters of personnel unaccounted for. The Pentagon is waiting for all the services' data before releasing any numbers.
"It's folly to try to pretend that there is a number before there is a number," Rumsfeld said.
The attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center have ushered in a new era in American security concerns, Rumsfeld said. "We are, in a sense, seeing the definition of a new battlefield. It is a different kind of conflict."
Then, in what appeared to be a rebuke of some federal officials, Rumsfeld said lax attitudes regarding the use of classified information was undermining national security. When classified data is provided to individuals who are not authorized to have it, he said, "the inevitable effect is to put the lives of men and women at risk."
When asked if compromised classified information had played a role in Tuesday's attack, Rumsfeld said, "not that I'm aware of." But he added, "It has been happening daily."