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When the president arrived Sept. 14, Manhattan was papered with the 
faces of the lost. Families, unable to believe that so many had vanished 
in an instant, held onto the hope that their loved ones were just 
missing. It was a place where a child comforted a grieving mother.

At a meeting the public never saw, the president spoke with several 
hundred of these families in a convention hall.

“People said to me, ‘He’ll come out. Don’t worry, Mr. president, we’ll 
see him soon. I know my loved one, he will - he’ll find a place to 
survive underneath the rubble and we’ll get him out.’ I, on the other 
hand had been briefed about the realities, and my job was to hug and 
cry, but I remember the whole time thinking, ‘This is incredibly sad 
because the loved ones won’t come out.’”

One little boy handed the president a picture of his father in his 
firefighter uniform and as he signed it, Mr. Bush remembers, he told the 
boy, “Your daddy won’t believe that I was here, so you show him that 
autograph.”

It was an effort “to provide a little hope,” the president recalls. “I 
still get emotional thinking about it because we’re dealing with people 
who loved their dads or loved their mom, or loved their…wives who loved 
their husbands. It was a tough time, you know, it was a tough time for 
all of us because we were a very emotional, and I was emotional at 
times. I felt, I felt the same now as I did then, which is sad. And I 
still feel sad for those who grieve for their families, but through my 
tears, I see opportunity.”

The president was supposed to be with the families for about 30 minutes; 
he stayed for two and a half hours. It was there he met Arlene Howard. 
The body of her son, George, was among the first to be found at ground 
zero.

“I called the police department,” Howard remembers, “ and they said he 
hadn’t called in for roll call and to call back in an hour and I said, 
‘No, I don’t need to call back.’ If he hadn’t called in, I knew where he 
was.”

George Howard had rescued children trapped in an elevator back in 1993 
when the World Trade Center was bombed. He had been off duty that day, 
and he was off duty on Sept. 11, but couldn’t stay away. The police 
department gave his badge to his mother and she gave it to the president.

“He (the president) he leaned over to talk to me,” Howard recalls. “And 
he extends his sympathy to me and that’s when I asked him I’d like to 
present George’s shield to him in honor of all the men and women who 
were killed over there.”

By the end of that day, Mr. Bush flew to Camp David visibly drained.

“He was physically exhausted, he was mentally exhausted, he was 
emotionally exhausted, he was spiritually exhausted,” recalls Card..

The next day – Saturday, Sept. 15 - Mr. Bush met members of his war 
cabinet at the presidential retreat for a last decisive meeting.

“My message is for everybody who wears the uniform – get ready. The 
United States will do what it takes,” Mr. Bush told them.

As Powell remembers it, “He was encouraging us to think boldly. He was 
listening to all ideas; he was not constrained to any one idea; he 
wanted to hear his advisors talk and argue and debate with each other.”

President Bush was pleased with the progress that had been made. “On the 
other hand,” he says, “I wanted to clarify plans and I went around the 
room and I asked everybody what they thought ought to happen.”

When he left that meeting on Saturday night, he still had not told the 
cabinet what he was planning.

“I wanted to just think it through,” Mr. Bush remembers. “Any time you 
commit troops to harm’s way, a president must make sure that he fully 
understands all the consequences and ramifications. And I wanted to just 
spend some time on it alone. And did.”

What were his reservations?

Mr. Bush says, “Could we win? I didn’t want to be putting our troops in 
there unless I was certain we could win. And I was certain we could win.”

Nine days after the attacks on America, before a joint session of 
Congress the president committed the nation to the war on terror.

“Each of us will remember what happened that day and to whom it 
happened,” Mr. Bush told the Congress and the nation. “We’ll remember 
the moment the news came, where we were and what we were doing. Some 
will remember an image of a fire or a story of rescue. Some will carry 
memories of a face and a voice gone forever. And I will carry this. It 
is the police shield of a man named George Howard, who died at the World 
Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to me by his mom, 
Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. It is my reminder of lives that 
ended and a task that does not end.”

A year has passed since then, but the president says his job is still to 
remind Americans of what happened and of the war that is still being 
waged, a war he reminds himself of every day in the Oval Office, 
literally keeping score, one terrorist at a time.

In his desk, the president says, “I have a classified document that 
might have some pictures on there, just to keep reminding me about who’s 
out there, where they might be”

And as the terrorists are captures or killed? “I might make a little 
check there, yeah,” Mr. Bush admits.

But there is no check by the name that must be on the top of that list – 
Osama bin Laden.

(CBS) A lot has happened in the year since Sept. 11. One year ago, the 
president was new on the job, with little experience in foreign policy. 
He had wanted to pull the military back from foreign entanglements. Now, 
on his orders, U.S. forces are engaged around the globe in a war he did 
not expect, in a world completely changed. In the Oval Office last week, 
CBS News Correspondent Scott Pelley asked the president about Iraq, 
about whether Americans are safe at home and about Osama bin Laden.
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Scott Pelley: You must be frustrated, maybe angry. After a year, we 
still don’t have Osama Bin Laden?