Mitch McConnell Quotes

We are in a war on terrorism. We need to conduct that war and take it to the terrorists, not here at home.

I think a lot of programs, policies have been put in place since 9/11, have prevented a 9/11-style attack. On the other hand, I think the threat has become greater, not lesser.

Well, our position, and our chairman has talked about this extensively, is that we had a lot of intelligence prior to 9/11. We knew that two al Qaeda operatives who ultimately participated in the 9/11 disaster were in the United States. We didn't find them.

I believe, based on the activities, and I am not an expert on terrorism by any stretch, but I believe that when they attacked the United States and they attacked New York and Washington, D.C., they thought they could defeat us.

In some ways, September 11, 2001, seems a long time ago. Yet we have done so much in only a few years, and we will continue to do so in the future, to prevent such attacks on America.

The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it's a global operation. It doesn't know national boundaries or national borders.

The primary goal of the War on Terror is to prevent an attack from happening.

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 not opposed to government efforts to stop terrorist plots. We are still seared by the memory of 9/11, and we should be.

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.

I think the American people believe in stopping and preventing terrorism pretty much at any cost.

We must fight and win the battle against terror overseas so we never have to fight it here at home.

I think, as a nation, we didn't learn our lessons from the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. We should have been more careful in a whole host of areas.

September 11 awoke us to the threat of terrorism. It was forever bookmarked in our history as the day when life as Americans knew it, changed forever.

The country was not focused on terrorism before September 11th.

To win the war on terror, we must know who our friends are and where our enemies are hiding. We can't continue fighting terrorism using the same foreign policy blueprints that were in place before September 11th.

One of the worst things we could do is start to act now as though the attack of 9/11 is a thing of the past and will never be repeated. That's just not true.

The anguish in London is a vivid reminder of why we cannot relent in taking the steps necessary to defend our homeland from the present terrorist threat.

Look, we constantly live looking at the issue of the threat of terrorism.

Al-Qa’ida members -- including some who are US citizens --have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

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.

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a fundamental shift in the American government's approach to Islamic terrorism.

The department was set up primarily to protect us from another terrorist attack from Islamic terrorists, and yet they talk about everything but that.

Since September 11, the U.S. has significantly improved its security to prevent another attack.

From our perspective, trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror, if you will, the war on terror that we're engaged in, this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there.