Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You couldn't have done this without killing an Arab prince.
We are tangled in a very significant Islamic insurgency in Iraq.
The treatise found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them.
Sister Virginia used to say, 'You'll be known by the company you keep.'
Most dramatically, and perhaps least noticed, is the violence inside Saudi Arabia itself.
Until we respect bin Laden, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary.
The war in Iraq - if Osama was a Christian - it's the Christmas present he never would have expected.
'The war in Iraq - if Osama was a Christian - it's the Christmas present he never would have expected.
Our leaders continue to say that we're making strong headway against this problem. And I think we are not.
Without the connotation good or bad, bin Laden's a great man in the sense that he's influenced the course of history.
I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable...Yes, I think it's probably a near thing.
We haven't done anything. That has devolved into a partisan bickering of the kind that says Nero was fiddling while Rome burned.
You just have to come to grips with the fact that people don't like to be invaded or bombed by anybody. And America has been engaged in that.
Well, the next attack in the United States will be larger than 9/11. And there's no doubt that if they have a weapon of mass destruction, they'll use it.
The uniqueness of the unit was more or less that it was focused on a single individual. It was really the first time the agency had done that sort of effort.
I know these days it sounds a little odd, but American governments are very fearful of European reaction. They were afraid we would be considered gunslingers.
If the Americans attack Iran for the first time in 1,400 years, we may unite Sunnis and Shias against us. So I guess there is room for accomplishment everywhere.
It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.
In an odd way, we have really destroyed two of our strongest allies against the Islamists. Saddam Hussein, and we've probably fatally undermined Bashir al Assad in Syria.
A nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device. Yes, I think it's probably a near thing.
I think we'll see it mostly in the United States. We're getting to the point where al Qaeda is ready to again attack us inside America. I think we're basically defenseless.
It is clear to me that the racism was on the other foot, that really, society in Europe was much more racist - vis-à-vis Arabs at least and black Africans - than American society.
Bin Laden is remarkably eager for Americans to know why he doesn't like us, what he intends to do about it and then following up and doing something about it in terms of military actions.
I'm much better informed than Mr. Clarke ever was about the nature of the intelligence that was available again Osama bin Laden and which was consistently denigrated by himself and Mr. Tenet.
We're being attacked, Britain is being attacked, our allies are being attacked because we've installed and backed and implemented a set of policies in the Middle East for the last years or more.
The world is lousy with Arab princes. And if we could have got Osama bin Laden, and saved at some point down the road 3,000 American lives, a few less Arab princes would have been OK in my book.
One of the problems of not allowing the American people to read what bin Laden has said is that in October 2001 just after the war began in Afghanistan, he gave a speech that had two parts to it.
Bin Laden does reprehensible activities, and we should surely take care of that by killing him as soon as we can. But he's not an irrational man. He's a very worthy enemy. He's an enemy to worry about.
What I tried to do is to present the evidence that's available and that no one has been able to refute. Not even the Arab governments who own their media have been able to denigrate bin Laden as a man.
No one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States. I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable.
Where he was, where his cells were, where his logistical channels were, how he communicated. Who his allies were. Who donated to them. I think it's fair to say the entire range of sources were brought to bear.
I think Mr. Clarke had a tendency to interfere too much with the activities of the CIA, and our leadership at the senior level let him interfere too much. So criticism from him I kind of wear as a badge of honor.
We've gone thorough religious wars and civil wars. America has gone through slavery, we've all gone through two world wars, segregation. Ultimately it's been a bloody, trying, wasteful, but eventually positive struggle.
One of the great intellectual failures of the American intelligence community, and especially the counterterrorism community, is to assume if someone hasn't attacked us, it's because he can't or because we've defeated him.
The FBI continues to be a broken, anachronistic organization, but state and local law enforcement officials are much more attuned to the kind of threat we're facing. I think that's very hopeful, but it's a long-term process.
And we're being attacked because of what we do, not because of who we are. And by refusing to talk about that, I'm afraid the American people, at least, don't have a good idea of just how dangerous the threat is that we face.
Major danger lie for America? That we could very well be defeated oversees and at home. And the source of it is clearly that we have yet to find a politician in either partywho's willing to tell the American people the truth.
And if that's what the American people want, then that's what the policy should be, of course. But the idea that anything in the United States is too sensitive to discuss or too dangerous to discuss is really, I think, absurd.
There is no way to avoid the reality that the American government in the past years has been the most spectacularly hypocrisy-driven government in the world. We rival the Soviet Union in some stages, in some ways, in hypocrisy.
If you look at groups in the Palestine region, Hamas and the Palestine Islamic jihad, more often than not in their first operations they would accidentally blow themselves up on the way to the target or the bomb wouldn't go off.
Saudi Arabia was, until just a few years ago, probably one of the most safe countries on earth. And now the paper is daily full of activities and shootouts between Islamists who supported Osama bin Laden and the government there.
I don't know what our capabilities are. If I were there, I think it would be nutty to do that. The only country on Earth more containable than Iran is Iraq. And we've certainly made a mistake there. We could have continued Saddam.
One of the reasons they didn't go to Bosnia, bin Laden has explained extensively, was because they couldn't establish a base anywhere. Not in Catholic Croatia. Not in Orthodox Serbia. So they sent some trainers and a lot of money.
And so to dismiss these homegrown terrorists as boobs, which is one of the terms that was used in one of the New York newspapers after the Miami raid, is true now, but to bet on that is I think a sure way to lose your bank account.
Initial incompetence is not a reason to be dismissive of capabilities. Al Qaeda itself was incompetent when it started as a terrorist organization. And clearly it's gone from blowing themselves up to knocking down the World Trade Center.
The second touchstone for America I think unquestionably was pushing to conclusion the program we had with the Russians to control the Soviet nuclear arsenal. I tend to think that more than anything else, that will come back to haunt us.
Our relationship with Israel is another reason we're being attacked. But an American politician - whether Muslim or not - who criticizes Israel as a martyrdom operation in American politics cannot survive as an official or as a politician.
I also think that there is a huge failure in the American education system to educate Americans about where we, our system, our government, came from. And to some extent this failure is shared in places like Britain and Canada and Australia.
It's very clear from what he [Osama ben Laden] said, what his lieutenants have said, that America is not even their main enemy. We're simply in the way of what they want to do in their own world, which is to destroy police states and Israel.
The major problem for America is we're losing two wars. We're losing in Afghanistan, we're losing in Iraq. And there seems very little likelihood that we're going to increase the number of troops we have in either place to the point that we can prevail.