Barack Obama Quotes

Reasonable people can disagree about the authorities the NSA should have, when it's appropriate for the CIA to use drone strikes, and how assertive U.S. foreign policy and intelligence should be.

The United States does not view our authority to use military force against Al Qaeda as being restricted solely to 'hot' battlefields like Afghanistan.

In full accordance with the law - and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives - the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qa'ida terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones.

As tragic as Benghazi was, its importance pales next to killing Osama bin Laden.

We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

Among all the upheavals of war with al Qaeda, the surest indicator of the historic stakes is the ongoing rotation of top U.S. government managers - scores at a time - into a bunker deep underground and far from Washington.

We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Killed not by a massive troop deployment but by a commando raid carried out by a few dozen highly trained men and helicopters.

If I had been in President Obama's shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS.

I used to have a little saying I used when people said, 'What are your priorities?' I'd give them a bit of government alphabet soup. I'd say 'CTCPROW: Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, rest of the world.'

The U.S., often in secret, carries out counterterrorism missions all the time, with drones in places like Yemen and Somalia.

The more we captured, the more we learned and eventually it destroyed the organization that attacked us on 9/11 and allowed us to get bin Laden.

The administration asserts that two thirds or three quarters of al-Qaeda’s managers have been captured or killed, and that al-Qaeda must therefore be on the ropes. Why spend vast sums defending against it?

A dangerous idea is gaining currency within a segment of the American populace. If a person does not support the United States-British bombing expedition in Afghanistan, it means that he or she backs Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda

By invading Iraq, the President has undermined the War on Terrorism.

On September 4, 2001, the Principals Committee met in the White House Situation Room. CIA Director George Tenet and the DOD leadership both spoke out against the use of armed Predators tp get bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership. They were not overruled [by President George W. Bush]. A week later we were attacked [on September 11].

I happen to be one of those in the antiwar part of things who actually supported Bill Clinton when he sent the cruise missiles in to take out bin Laden. I had thought we had the right to use Special Forces to go in for bin Laden. He had attacked American embassies. He attacked ships. And so, I didn't see any need to coddle the Taliban.

The White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him.

But here too it should be noted that the President's approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade.

The decision he made with Usama bin Laden was a tactical decision. It wasn't a strategic decision. The strategic decision was made by President Bush to go after him. What President Obama has done on his watch, the issues that have come up while he's been president, he's gotten it wrong strategically every single time.

Obama killed Osama. Yes, President Barack Obama gets to crow about the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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.

I don't think there's any question that America is safer as a result of the bin Laden operation.

Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?