Elif Batuman Quotes

Afghanistan remains an opportunity to deal al Qaeda a vital strategic blow, especially since we have abandoned all operations - including counterterrorism operations - in Iraq.

It was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Iraq did nothing to us. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11.

I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11.

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

Saddam Hussein didn't kill 3,100 people on Sept. 11. Osama bin Laden did, and as far as we know he's still alive.

Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11.

There's overwhelming evidence... circumstantial and otherwise, to suggest a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th.

The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.

No connection between Iraq and the 9/11 catastrophe.

In the post-9/11 world you cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. As a result of our going into Iraq, not only is Saddam Hussein gone, but Qaddafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction and tremendous progress is being made in Iraq.

My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis - a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis - that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.

For twenty years, Islamic Jihadists have been attacking American interests around the world and we did not take them seriously until September 11th, 2001.

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.

There were no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein was not involved in the September 11th attack.

Osama bin Martin

You can’t separate the struggle against the Baathists (of Iraq) from the struggle against global terrorism.

What bin Laden had hoped to achieve in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 period, which was to drag the United States into a protracted guerrilla war like the one he had fought against the Soviets, never happened. Instead, that protracted guerrilla war is now playing out in Iraq, in the heart of the Middle East.

Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith was equally insistent in 2002-2003 about an operational relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.

Contrary to what the Americans frequently reiterated, al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime.

Iraq broke our back in terms of counterterrorism. There's no doubt about it. The first thing, though, that hurt us was the fact that the U.S. military was absolutely unprepared to do anything on 9/11 - or 9/12 or 9/13. And by the time we actually attacked Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban had dispersed.

The President reminded us that the war in Iraq is a central battlefield in the war on terror that began the morning of September the 11th.

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.

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