Dick Cheney Quotes

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

There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 11 September attacks. There was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.

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 think the important thing to remember here is that we haven't been attacked again at home since September of 2001.

Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.

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

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.

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

Remaining vigilant toward this ever-present threat means constantly learning how better to protect ourselves. But primarily it reminds us that we must fight and win the war on terror, so that we do not have to fight it here in America.

There is no priority higher than the prevention of 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 am not opposed to government efforts to stop terrorist plots. We are still seared by the memory of 9/11, and we should be.

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.

Every time we meet a new terrorist group, we argue they are utterly different and we can learn nothing from the last time. Of course they are different, but some lessons on how we deal with them seem to apply in all cases.

After the horrific attacks of September 11th, it was evident that our Government needed to be transformed to meet the new challenges of this dangerous world.

We cannot allow Afghanistan to become again a haven for terrorists who inspire, plan and provide support for attacks like those of 11 September 2001, of 7 July 2005 in London, and more.

And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.

So we mustn't lower our guard in any sense because of what has happened in terms of the death of Osama Bin Laden and we are certainly not doing that. The terror threat level here in the U.K. remains at severe and we're very conscious of the need to continue that.

The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.

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

Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.

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.

Obviously, the death of Usama Bin Laden marked a strategic milestone in our effort to defeat al-Qa'ida. Unfortunately, Bin Laden's death, and the death and capture of many other al-Qa'ida leaders and operatives, does not mark the end of that terrorist organization or its efforts to attack the United States and other countries.

They do believe that if we do not wage this war against terror in places like Baghdad and Kabul, we are more likely to have it waged in Baltimore and Kansas.

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.