Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

Terrorists can utilize any vulnerability in the system and that would include outbound shipments.

A big challenge in combating terrorism is learning how to think about things that we can't imagine.

In the real world in which we live, it's a dangerous world. And you know the old saying is that we have to be right 100 percent of the time; the terrorists only have to be right once.

The challenge of terrorism is that they strike at vulnerability.

The West only talks about how you can militarily defeat the terrorists, but terrorists are very difficult to defeat because they can appear anywhere.

They only have to be right one time, the terrorists do, and we have to be wrong one time.

A terrorist can attack at any time at any place using a range of techniques. It is physically impossible to defend at every time in every location against every conceivable technique of terrorism. Therefore, if your goal is to stop it, you cannot stop it by defense. You can only stop it by taking the battle to the terrorists, where they are and going after them.

Terrorism is resorted to for practical reasons because there is no other tool available. And those who use terrorism, and then subsequently become the targets of terrorism, understand its power and how difficult it is to counter it. Not just militarily. But especially in terms of international perception.

We remain vulnerable. There is no such thing as 100 percent security against terrorism.

Terrorists always have the advantage of surprise.

Since Homeland Security got up to speed in the spring of 2002, it as warned of al Qaeda using or targeting amusement parks, apartment building, banks, beer coolers, boats, cargo planes, cell phone, churches, crop dusters, farmer's almanacs, hijacked oil trucks, inner-city train, malls, nightclubs, reservoirs, scuba divers, sports stadiums, and subways. Add limousines to the list and helicopters.

The great lesson of 9/11 is that improper hoarding of information can cost lives and harm national security.

In counter terrorism it is usually easier to go for a clean strike than to determine what the reasons are for the terrorists to attack us.

The terrorist determines the time, manor, place and mode of attack.

Fighting terrorists does not require half a trillion dollars worth of conventional and nuclear forces.

Unrivaled hegemonic power has not kept the United States safe from terrorist attack; nor has often brutal retaliation deterred suicide attacks in Russia or Israel.

Biological terrorism poses the ultimate asymmetric threat but it should be considered in the same class as the nuclear threat.

We could have prevented the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon if we had 20,000 troops shoulder to shoulder.

Spain has been battling terrorism for 30 years while we were trading arms for hostages.

There's been intelligence that terrorists would look to programs such as the visa waiver program to exploit.

The point is the country has got serious problems dealing with terrorism both domestic and international.

We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.

It is time we learnt that a terrorist is no man's friend and everyman's enemy.

Most of the people who were responsible for 9/11 are now in custody or have been killed. But there are others, and they plot and they plan, and they hope to pull it off again. And while we have to be right 100 percent of the time, they only have to be right once. So there's no way to overreact to that.