John McCain Quotes

Al-Qaeda has one ideology and they go back to the same leadership in Afghanistan or in Syria or in Iraq. That's the question. You have tens of thousands of foreigners, that's definitely correct. We are fighting them on the ground and we know this.

Nevertheless, I do know that we are part of a danger zone, we have military operations in Afghanistan and we're training the Iraqi police force. The terrorists also have us in their sights.

The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan.

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

The rise of ISIS starts with a Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who founded ISIS' parent organization, al Qaeda, in Iraq. What gave Zarqawi the opportunity to create al Qaeda in Iraq? It was, of course, George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Will an Iraq war make our Al Qaeda problem worse? Not likely.

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

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

But there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks.

I know the pain of having to deal with terrorism. And that's why, after 9-11, I was one of the first to join the international coalition to fight terrorism.

For many foreign fighters, the jihad in Iraq and Syria is a commuter war.

There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.

I would like to see us find Osama Bin Laden, but let's say we did capture him. Let's say we did kill him. How much good would that do? There's still thousands of people behind him. It's this huge thing.

We have to defeat ISIS. We have to make certain that we destroy them and that we push them back.

We need to defeat al Queda and other terrorist organizations.

They may be rich, they may be powerful, they may have atom bombs, but Americans and British are no longer safe anywhere in the world…. They may perhaps be able to put Al-Qaeda out of commission, but that does not mean that there will not be other groups. They have been killing so-called terrorist all these years, but there'll simply be more and more terrorists

Find Al Quaeda and Kill Them

There are very few fighters in the ISIS organization in Iraq and Syria coming from the United States; most of them have either come from a region of the Middle East or from Europe.

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.

Let's have a conversation about how we destroy ISIS.

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.

Osama bin Laden is gone. The war in Iraq is over. Afghanistan is coming to a close.

As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan.

At the end of the day, Iraq was a part of the fight against terrorism.

British intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan swelled the grievances home-grown fanatics fed off, while al Qaeda morphed and re-grouped in lawless sanctuaries from Somalia to Yemen.