Quotes About Qaeda

#1. The gravest risks from al Qaeda combine its affinity for big targets and its announced desire for weapons of mass destruction.

Barton Gellman

#2. I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy; about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge.

Dave Matthews

#3. In Nigeria, Hillary Clinton amazingly fought for two years to keep an Al-Qaeda affiliate off the terrorist watch list.

Chris Christie

#4. Turkey's solidarity with Hamas is not, of course, based on Arab nationalism, which as a non-Arab nation it does not support. It is instead based on a definition of the Mideast conflict as one between Jews and Muslims, precisely the position of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Elliott Abrams

#5. Al Qaeda has declared war on the Somali pirates. That is awesome! Evil against evil. Like Alien versus Predator or Cheney versus his lawyer.

Craig Ferguson

#6. When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,

Dick Cheney

#7. Let me say what I actually believe. I believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy, by Al Qaeda, and Osama Bin Laden, and no one else trying to hurt America.

Van Jones

#8. We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

Kurt Vonnegut

#9. Al Qaeda's message that violence, terrorism and extremism are the only answer for Arabs seeking dignity and hope is being rejected each day in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and throughout the Arab lands.

Elliott Abrams

#10. I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency.

Mike Fitzpatrick

#11. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, a whole host of networks that are bent on attacking America, who have a distorted ideology, who have perverted the faith of Islam, and so we have to go after them.

Barack Obama

#12. I've been a military lawyer for 33 years. A member of al Qaeda or their affiliate group can be detained under a law of war as long as their threat to our nation without a trial.

Lindsey Graham

#13. God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.

George W. Bush

#14. There are many causes of violent deaths in America - murders and traffic accidents - that we do not approach with the same 'no price too steep, no task too difficult' approach that we take toward al Qaeda.

Dennis C. Blair

#15. You snitch!" It's 6:45p.m. and I am being held hostage by terrorist extremists with a list of demands that make Al-Qaeda look like preschoolers playing pirate.

Julia Kent

#16. Al-Qaeda's resurgence brings out the worst in the Bush Administration's math and logic.

Jon Stewart

#17. Personally, I do not think that torture is necessary. But it may be the case that interrogation methods that go beyond questioning, but do not arise to the level of torture, may be necessary to get actionable intelligence from high-ranking al Qaeda leaders

John Yoo

#18. The CIA was always looking to tie every kind of criminal activity in the Middle East to al Qaeda.

Kenneth Eade

#19. I would guess, I would surmise that some of the more spectacular bombings are done by al Qaeda suiciders.

George W. Bush

#20. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of Sept. 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who masterminded the Sept. 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein, who did not.

Robert Byrd

#21. By releasing these five top Taliban commanders, the U.S. is demonstrating that it is throwing in the towel in the long struggle against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies in Afghanistan.

Jonathan S. Tobin

#22. Al-Qaeda's obituary has been written countless times over the decade. Each iteration has proved to be ephemeral, as the moment has continually shown itself to have a deeper bench than we imagine.

Bruce Hoffman

#23. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it's fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

John McCain

#24. Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda - worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was.

Keith Olbermann

#25. Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do.

Bob Simon

#26. The attack on Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 is a stark reminder that our nation must remain vigilant in protecting our citizens from the threat of Al-Qaeda and similar extremist terrorist entities around the world.

Bob Corker

#27. Al Qaeda has come back. Al Qaeda is a resilient organization. But they're not here in large numbers. But al Qaeda doesn't have to be anywhere in large numbers.

John R. Allen

#28. I think a cyber-terrorism attack is overblown, though the threat exists. I think al Qaeda and other groups are more interested in symbolic terrorism, like what they did to the World Trade Center - suicide bombers or something that really has an effect and is meaningful to people.

Kevin Mitnick

#29. ISIL is not your parents' al Qaeda. It's a very different model.

James Comey

#30. If Islam opposes terrorism, then Saudi Arabia should announce that no one supportive of ISIS or Al Qaeda is welcome in Mecca to make Hajj.

Bob Enyart

#31. Mr. Speaker, we are a blessed Nation. We have not suffered another attack on our soil since September 11, and we are grateful. We have killed or captured dozens of members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Our military and intelligence forces are working both hard and smart.

Marsha Blackburn

#32. If you don't understand what al Qaeda was trying to do on 9/11, if you don't have a sense of who Osama bin Laden is as a person, if you don't have a sense of what al Qaeda, the organization, was on 9/11, 9/11 appears to be more or less inexplicable.

Peter Bergen

#33. I was against the Iraq war I was against the Afghan war I was against bombing Libya and Syria but to be quite honest and with a heavy heart because more innocent people are gonna be killed....We have to step in and help wipeout ISIS!

Cal Sarwar

#34. Searches of al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, undertaken since American-backed forces took control there, are not known to have turned up a significant cache of nuclear materials.

Barton Gellman

#35. There is evidence that some of al Qaeda's nuclear efforts over the years met with swindles and false leads.

Barton Gellman

#36. The US military has achieved a decisive blow against al-Qaeda with its commando action against Osama Bin Laden and his killing.

Angela Merkel

#37. If al Qaeda or any other enemy of our country manages to create a situation or explode a bomb or murder or incapacitate large numbers of our people, we cannot wait for 7 weeks of a special election in order to deal with that.

Dana Rohrabacher

#38. And after September the 11th, the United States Congress also granted me additional authority to use military force against al Qaeda ...

George W. Bush

#39. If you refuse to see Superman Returns this summer, what you're saying about yourself is: I heart Al Qaeda.

Christian Finnegan

#40. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad.

George W. Bush

#41. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together

Colin Powell

#42. In my judgment, the greatest risks are international terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah. The war in Iraq has taken our attention off those priorities.

Bob Graham

#43. Credible reporting indicates that Al Qaeda is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process ...

Tom Ridge

#44. The people who illegally cross into the country are from countries that have very close ties to al Qaeda, whether it's Yemen or Afghanistan, Pakistan, China. It is an absolute national disgrace.

Rick Perry

#45. We tend to forget in the West that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

#46. The mission - the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda. But we have to make sure there's not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.

Michael Mullen

#47. Washington and New York, two primary targets for Al Qaeda.

Howard Bloom

#48. Our only goal is to strengthen the opposition and to avoid the dilemma whereby we only have the choice between Bashar Assad and al-Qaeda.

Francois Hollande

#49. A foreign ideology cannot be introduced into Chechnya - were it through an Arab or al-Qaeda. Our experience is rich and long enough for us to be Muslims and know what jihad is.

Aslan Maskhadov

#50. Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed.

Barton Gellman

#51. Sometimes I think that we should send all of the Killer Mediums to Afghanistan because al-Qaeda wouldn't stand a chance.

Paul Rudnick

#52. Will an Iraq war make our Al Qaeda problem worse? Not likely.

Christopher Hitchens

#53. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period.

George Tenet

#54. I would show up at a party for Al Qaeda if you said there's going to be a dinner.

Gilbert Gottfried

#55. Staying in a very public fight with the U.S. is exactly what Al Qaeda wants.

Richard Engel

#56. We know that al Qaeda is seeking radioactive materials and technology to launch a devastating attack, and that hundreds of radioactive sources have been lost or stolen in the U.S. and around the world.

Ed Markey

#57. The way you really stop Al-Qaeda is by stopping their funding. It's not by carpet-bombing or land invasions or anything.

Adam McKay

#58. Punishing abuse in Iraq should not return the U.S. to Sept. 10, 2001, in the way it fights al Qaeda, while Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants remain at large and continue to plan attacks.

John Yoo

#59. Our enemy is Al Qaeda and its allies, people who have publicly said they wish to attack the United States again, people who have publicly called on nuclear physicists and engineers to help them gain access to nuclear weapons, which, as the whole world knows, Pakistan has.

Richard Holbrooke

#60. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all means possible

Osama Bin Laden

#61. Leaders at the top of al Qaeda's hierarchy, the evidence shows, completed plans and obtained the materials required to manufacture two biological toxins - botulinum and salmonella - and the chemical poison cyanide.

Barton Gellman

#62. We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda's attacks on America launched the nation into three wars - against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State.

Tom Brokaw

#63. The change we need is fixing this broken economy from the bottom up.. not tax breaks for the wealthy and huge corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas. We need to focus on defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban and restoring America's standing in the world.. not an unending commitment in Iraq.

Joe Biden

#64. We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out.

Colin Powell

#65. All around the world one heard or read that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Peter Schuyler

#66. If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for [Barack] Obama but also for the Democrats.

John Howard

#67. You would have thought that after 9/11 the president would have finished the job in Afghanistan, and kept the focus on capturing Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda deputies, but he and his team gave top priority to their original plan to invade Iraq.

Bill Nelson

#68. What could be better in al-Qaeda's mind than to have India and Pakistan going at each other? What more to further their aims?

Richard Armitage

#69. There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.

Robin Cook

#70. There have been linkages between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda going back more or less a decade.

Douglas Feith

#71. I assure my fellow citizens that the vast majority of Muslims experience the same fear they do. ISIS and Al Qaeda are my enemies, too. Most of the people killed by these groups have been Muslim.

Debbie Almontaser

#72. Given that the Al Qaeda core has been significantly destroyed or disabled, and that the leadership seems to be essentially on the run or in hiding, it would lead me to think that probably it is one of the less centralized groups that might be the greatest danger.

Graham T. Allison

#73. There was promulgation of false propaganda by the administration about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was promulgation of false propaganda about Iraq as a base for Al Qaeda.

Jimmy Carter

#74. I have never once been persuaded as to the causal link between the Iraqi regime, al-Qaeda and September 11. I do believe the impact of war under these circumstances is bound to weaken the international coalition against terrorism itself ...

Charles Kennedy

#75. It has never demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans. If anything, the murders of Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl declare al Qaeda's intentions to kill even innocent civilian prisoners.

John Yoo

#76. We as Iraqis have suffered enormously as a result of al-Qaeda and its leader.

Hoshyar Zebari

#77. Al Qaeda likes to coordinate, have a central command to be able to send out emissaries around that they have highly trained and say, 'This is the moment we're going to do a large-scale attack.'

James Lankford

#78. I mean you think about the guy, the Nigerian guy, who was going to blow up the plane. He was wearing a pair of Fruit of the Lunatic ... Guy was not too bright. He said that the reason he became a suicide bomber was to work his way up in the al Qaeda organization.

David Letterman

#79. 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.

Michael Scheuer

#80. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.

Thomas Friedman

#81. Al Qaeda is very media-savvy and very focused on what goes on in the global media.

Michael Chertoff

#82. Iraq is now the central front in the war against al-Qaeda.

John McCain

#83. It is fair to say there are individuals in the United States who ascribe to al-Qaeda-type beliefs.

Janet Napolitano

#84. While it may be true that the UAE has been an ally since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the American people know it has also harbored and aided some of the al Qaeda agents who were involved in that attack.

Bart Gordon

#85. Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

John Yoo

#86. And I know your next move, I watch you so much, 'There's been no proven link between the secular state of Iraq and al-Qaeda!' Come on. They both think we're Satan. Isn't that a nice starting point? Why are you so loathe to believe they might have each other on lunatic speed dial?

Dennis Miller

#87. An intelligence analyst may attribute an attack to al Qaeda, whereas a policy maker could opt for the more general 'extremist.'

Michael Hayden

#88. We don't want the Taliban to put down roots, or the al Qaeda to put down roots in Afghanistan that can facilitate Afghanistan becoming - once again - a launching pad for international terrorism.

John R. Allen

#89. Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, they all have ties to Iranian money. I think they are the biggest exist - existential threat. Russia could be up there, but it would probably be to one of our NATO allies rather than the homeland.

Eric Bolling

#90. They have involved co-operation between the Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda operatives on training and combined operations regarding bomb making and chemical and biological weapons.

Douglas Feith

#91. In fact, if you look upon the situation today, there is great division in the world and we have failed to capitalize on that unity to finish the job in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda.

Chris Van Hollen

#92. That's Al Qaeda's new plan: to destroy America one period at a time.

Chelsea Handler

#93. There's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

George Clooney

#94. One mushroom cloud would change history. My deepest fear is that this is exactly what they Al Qaeda intend.

George Tenet

#95. ISIS and Al-Qaeda and whoever else, that is the only way they stop is after we convert. That's what they say. The only way this stops is when the infidels convert.

Rush Limbaugh

#96. In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists, had an established relationship with al Qaeda, and his regime is no more.

Dick Cheney

#97. Now, al Qaeda's on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people.

Condoleezza Rice

#98. P of what al Qaeda tries to do, and terrorists, is disrupt. Americans should live their lives just as they have every day, but just be aware.

Dutch Ruppersberger

#99. True enough, Osama bin Laden is dead and other al-Qaeda leaders have joined him. But, the assassination of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi is a brutal reminder that radical Islamic terror groups have not disappeared and certainly are not dormant.

Bob Beauprez

#100. Saudi hijackers first came into contact with al-Qaeda and went through Terrorism 101 when they signed up for the jihad in Afghanistan.

Thomas Friedman