Barton Gellman Quotes

Many of us didn't believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border.

Afghanistan is where much of the al Qaeda journey began. It is the main site where Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their cohort rose to prominence fighting the Soviets in the 1980s. Afghan territory holds special significance to the group, which is committed to retaking it and re-establishing it as the base of a global movement.

Osama bin Laden is going after us to get us out of the region, so he can deal with the regimes that he sees in the region, or replace them with purists.

In 1995, sanctions led Sudan to cut its ties with terrorists and expel Osama bin Laden.

Osama bin Martin

Of course there is a tie between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. These are strong ties, because the Taliban gave up Afghanistan for the sake of Al-Qaeda. There are still Al-Qaeda youth here, in Afghanistan. The Taliban is willing to accompany Al-Qaeda to any country in order to wage Jihad there. they want to establish Allah's law everywhere. Our religion is one, and we will remain together.

After 9/11, Hekmatyar helped Osama bin Laden escape from the mountains of Tora Bora into Pakistan, and then decamped to Iran, until his presence there became a bit too inconvenient.

If there is one Osama bin Laden now, there will be 100 bin Ladens afterwards.

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.

Bin Laden is remarkably eager for Americans to know why he doesn't like us, what he intends to do about it and then following up and doing something about it in terms of military actions.

Without the connotation good or bad, bin Laden's a great man in the sense that he's influenced the course of history.

We know from the material that was recovered from the bin Laden compound that bin Laden was looking at the 10th anniversary of 9/11 as an opportunity to strike yet again at the U.S. homeland.

The Taliban, broadly speaking, are Afghans - farmers, subsistence farmers. As I say, most of those people can't find the United States on the map. Al Qaeda, traditionally, are much more educated, middle-class people, often from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, North Africa.

There's no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born revolutionary who is believed by most Arab and Iranian observers to be the inspiration of the attacks in New York and Washington, is the best known of the Islamic militants to have emerged in the past 20 years and the least difficult to fathom.

I think the real target of al-Qaeda is Saudi Arabia by the way. They hate us and we're a vehicle to get at Saudi Arabia. I think Osama bin Laden really wants to topple that regime and have his people move in, but that's a whole other story.

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.

Osama bin Laden organized an attack that was carried out against the United States, New York, Pentagon, and the other aircraft, with 19 attackers, 19 guys with box cutters. An attack that probably cost almost nothing.

The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote.

Before 9-11 Osama Bin Laden trained more terrorists than we trained FBI agents.

We’d better get Bin Laden. The failure to get Bib Laden fuels Moslem fundamentalism and serves as a recruiting tool for our enemies.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.

Many people would like Osama bin Laden … to hurt America, but they do not want bin Laden to rule their children.

Abu Musab al-Suri is someone I got to know pretty well because he's a Syrian. Very bright guy, lived in London. He actually was the person who took myself and correspondent Peter Arnett and the cameraman, Peter Juvenal, to interview bin Laden for his first TV interview.

Al-Qaeda, which means 'the base' in English, lost its base and training camps in Afghanistan, while its leaders were on the run, captured, or dead. One year after the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda was still on life support.