Michael Scheuer Quotes

ISIL presents a growing threat not only in Syria and Iraq, but throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and now in the United States as well. Terrorists and their enablers will continue to receive the unwavering attention of law enforcement and the intelligence community.

Al Qaeda has been placed on the run, but not destroyed.

You look at [terrorists] faces, they look foreigners, but where are they coming from ? How precise this estimate is difficult to tell, but definitely the majority are Al-Qaeda.

Al Qaeda has come back. Al Qaeda is a resilient organization. But they're not here in large numbers. But al Qaeda doesn't have to be anywhere in large numbers.

The terrorism from 9/11 has metastasized. It's metastasized in Iraq and Syria, in Nigeria, in Somalia, in Yemen and in other places in North Africa. We need a very comprehensive strategy to deal with that threat.

When you say that terrorism, particularly ISIS, radicals or terrorists being contained, that are the jayvee team, we don't have to worry about them anymore and then people are being killed in Nice, in Berlin, certainly in Orlando at the nightclub, in San Bernardino, in Paris, in Brussels, it doesn't ring true to anybody that they're not advancing. It doesn't ring true to anybody.

Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, sowing death and destruction and plunging many of our brothers and sisters into grief and despair

It's time to refocus our global fight against terrorism. We must move away from the Iraq-centric policies that are draining our resources and focus on Al Qaeda and its affiliates who are reportedly operating in some 60 to 80 countries around the world.

Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.

International terrorism is throwing down a challenge, and not just to Russia.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates - which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name.

Spontaneous operations performed by individuals and cells here and there over the whole world, without connections between them, have put the local and international intelligence apparatus in a state of confusion, as arresting the members of aborted cells does not influence the operational activities of others who are not connected with them.

Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic used by an enemy in pursuit of a political objective. There will be no final victory against terrorism, but there may be victories that are close enough to final against particular political groups that use terror tactics.

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

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

Given its Internet sophistication and the attraction the group has with vast numbers of potential recruits from among disaffected populations around the globe, ISIS has the realistic potential to eventually swell its ranks of jihadists waging a 'holy war' to hundreds of thousands in both the western and eastern hemispheres.

Your parents' al Qaeda was a very different model than the threat we face today.

Terrorists are everywhere and, emphatically, not only in Iraq.

It's getting tougher and tougher to defeat ISIS, because they're in more and more places, more and more states, more and more nations.

I will knock the hell out of ISIS.

We've been dealing with this kind of terrorism since the fifties, since the Muslim Brotherhood came to Syria at that time.

(Terrorists) are planning to disrupt our democratic process. It's scary I know, but we're not going to let al Qaeda tell us what to do. In fact, our government has decided that if al Qaeda attempts to disrupt our democratic process, we are going to respond by disrupting it first.

There is a war on terror that must be fought. Nobody's immune... And so rather than finding fault with what Spain has done by being aggressive in the war on terror, this should redouble everyone's efforts to go after terrorist organizations of any kind... Terror has to be brought to an end.

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.

What we have done is when the threat has been directed at the United States, i.e., the terrorist threat from ISIL or Al-Qaeda in Syria, is to go after them.