President George W. Bush has spoken 22,000 words in the past week in a series of speeches on the “war on terror” but on Sunday he let a carefully posed silence remind Americans of September 11 2001 as he laid a wreath at Ground Zero.

Faced with criticism from Democrats that he was politicising the day, the White House said Mr Bush would make no prepared remarks on Monday, as he marks the fifth anniversary of the attacks with a meeting of emergency personnel in New York and holds further moments of silence at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.