Rahm Emanuel Quotes

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.

Since its enactment in the weeks following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the tools in the Patriot Act have been used by law enforcement to stop more than 400 terrorist threats to our families and communities.

As president of the United States, my top priority will be to keep America safe. We're going to go after the terrorist networks. We're going to go after Osama bin Laden. We are not going to live in fear in this country.

In the aftermath of September 11th, it is critical to secure our borders.

Right now we're on the President Obama plan, and we'll stay with that. And from my perspective, the reason we're there is to make sure that we can achieve the principal goal which is ensure that Afghanistan can never become a safe haven for a terrorist organization like al Qaeda.

While I agree that homegrown terrorism and the jihadist threat deserve continuing attention, a single-minded approach ignores all other threats.

We are ready to engage in international co-operation against terrorism with a view to safeguarding national interests and regional security and stability.

Therefore, every country has to understand that fighting against international terrorism is not for the sake of the United States, but for the sake of themselves, and, to a larger extent, in the name of stability of international relations.

In my book, I detail the critical information we obtained from al Qaeda terrorists after they became compliant following a short period of enhanced interrogation. I have no doubt that that interrogation was legal, necessary and saved lives.

Louis Freeh said on national TV that actionable intelligence could have allowed us to stop the hijackings.

We are keeping New Jersey one step, several steps, ahead of terrorism.

The administration points out that no major terrorist acts have occurred on American soil since 9/11. Clearly, we must be doing something right, they say, and maybe we don’t need to do much more--- at least not at home.

A key reason that most Israeli counterterrorism policies have enjoyed sustained popular support is that they have been subjected to public debate.

We have not yet, as a nation, made a generation-long commitment to this terrorist threat.

If terrorists attacked New York, Washington, or San Francisco with a weapon of mass destruction, the next day we will all be asking what steps we might have taken to prevent it. So the question is, “Why do we not take those steps now?”

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

The problem was you didn’t have an approach against Al Qaeda because you didn’t have an approach against Afghanistan. And you didn’ have an approach against Afghanistan because you didn’t have an approach against Pakistan. And until we could get that right, we didn’t have a policy.

When these attacks occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them.

The counterterrorism strategy known as CONTEST aimed to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from terrorism, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence.

I condemn any form of terrorism and especially the terrorism that would affect my country and me.

President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq.

It is very much in America's national security interests to ensure that the Taliban do not dominate Afghanistan and that neither ISIS nor al Qaeda continues their growth in the country.

The nature of Homeland Security is that no news is good news. And no news sometimes means somebody got interdicted at the border, somebody got interdicted before they could get on an airplane, somebody was arrested providing material support to terrorism. Homeland Security means very often something you never hear about.

I think, in the wake of Sept. 11, it's important for the American public to understand that to the extent that there are individuals within the United States who would undertake terrorist attacks, that we are doing something to address that.

I am ready to debate how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty.