After receiving the unanimous backing of the US Senate to use "necessary and appropriate force" against terrorism, President Bush yesterday visited the site of the collapsed World Trade Centre in New York.
To defiant cheers of "USA! USA!" from weary rescue workers, the President picked up an American flag and waved it high in the air. "This conflict was begun on the timing of others. It will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing," said Mr Bush.
As he addressed firemen and construction workers through a megaphone, someone shouted: "We can't hear you," to which Mr Bush replied: "The people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon.
The President, making his first visit to the site of the catastrophe, walked through the rubble shaking hands with yellow-helmeted workers lined up on West Side Highway and occasionally cheering and shouting "USA".
Mr Bush arrived in New York hours after receiving the unanimous support of the US Congress for whatever military action he considered necessary against individuals, organisations or nations believed to have organised the attack on the Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Congress also agreed to provide $20 billion in funding for the action and a further $20 billion for the reconstruction of the devastated financial heart of New York.
Walking through dust and shredded paper, Mr Bush 'and his party of Senators and House members seemed overawed by the mountains of concrete, debris, window frames and steel beams.
Workers made sure that the party did not have to walk through unsifted rubble where firemen have found many small body parts in a task which has horrified seasoned rescue workers.
By yesterday the rescue workers had removed 10,425 tons of rubble in their efforts to find bodies.
Just five people have been pulled alive from the wreckage since the events on Tuesday which have traumatised the financial world.
New York City's two airports reopened yesterday for the first time since Tuesday morning.
Earlier, at a service in the national cathedral in Washington, the President spoke of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had called "the warm courage of national unity", a unity that was "now extending across the world", and paid tribute to the courage of those involved in the rescue.
"Out responsibility to history is already clear - to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. This nation is peaceful;, but fierce when turned to anger".
As the nation marked its grief with solemn religious ceremonies of remembrance, the US yesterday closed ranks emotionally and politically.
Across the country in cities and villages, from countless homes, a sea of American flags expressed the solidarity of ordinary people.
Yesterday evening tens of thousands of New Yorkers stepped outside hotels, restaurants, shops and apartments to stand outside holding lit candles in memory of the more than 4,700 known to have died in Tuesday's conflagration.
People formed flickering lines of light in the dusk along Manhattan's main avenues and in the outer suburbs after the candle lighting was promoted through an e-mail campaign headed, "Americans show unity against terrorism".
Earlier the President marked the country's resolve to respond in kind to the attacks by endorsing the mobilisation of up to 50,000 army reservists.
The Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, issued an appeal to five governments - Japan, India, Saudia Arabia, Tunisia and Morocco - to take a stand on Washington's side by cutting off funds to extremists organisations.
The United States has also asked Pakistan for assistance, including permission to fly over th4 country and "military access". Reports early this morning on CNN said the Pakistan government agreed to co-operate.
A Taliban spokesman told the AFP newsagency yesterday that they expected a US attack. "We are ready to pay any price to defend ourselves and to use all means to take our revenge."
Mr Powell spent much of the day mobilising support from leaders in the Middle East and around the world.
Meanwhile in advance of the planned reopening of the U S stockmarkets on Monday, major, major security firms and corporations have reached an extraordinary agreement to prop up prices by buying shares if a flood of sell orders threatens to send the markets into freefall, industry and government sources told the Washington Post yesterday.
The investigation into Tuesday's terrorist attacks is continuing with great intensity. The FBI believes it has identified 19 hijackers, all ticketed passengers, involved in the seizure of the four planes on Tuesday - five on three of the planes and four on the remaining one.
Investigators are building up a detailed picture of the tight-knit group who used the cover of their communities. Their children attended local schools while they learnt to fly jets at US airschools.