Chris Matthews Quotes

Staying in a very public fight with the U.S. is exactly what Al Qaeda wants.

I think ISIS is achieving the objectives that they have set out to achieve. I think that they feel probably very emboldened. They feel pretty good. Their resiliency is extraordinary.

If you are talking about terrorism, you need to sit down and understand what is making these people put dynamite around their waists and blow themselves up.

Iraq... has also had contacts with al-Qaida. Their ties may be limited by divergent ideologies, but the two sides' mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggests that tactical cooperation between them is possible.

The bombers were enemies of Islam and enemies of the country. We will do everything and anything needed to stop them.

The presence of jihadis in Syria should be no surprise.

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

Come to the so-called caliphate and live the life of some sort of glory ...; and if you can't come, kill somebody where you are; kill somebody in uniform; kill anybody; if you can cut their head off, great; videotape it; do it; do it; do it.... Kill, kill, kill.

Terrorists

The terrorists of today are not wild-eyed, illiterate fanatics who merely obey the orders of their evil leaders. They are educated, well-off, normal people with wives and families to love and look after. We cannot know they are terrorists until they have committed their horrible crimes.

Terrorists regard themselves as a vanguard. They're trying to mobilize others to their cause. I mean, every specialist on terrorism knows that.

We're dealing with an enemy now, ISIS, that has a very sophisticated social media program.

ISIS has leadership, just like al Qaeda has leadership. It's important to be able to eliminate the individuals that are leading the organization.

The Islamic State has proven that terrorists can seize and deploy modern military equipment on lesser-armed opponents.

We need to view ISIS as an enemy.

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.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, straps a bomb on their body because they were recruited from the Internet. It takes an enormous amount of personal face-to-face contact and time in order to recruit a young person into the cause of jihad.

There have been linkages between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda going back more or less a decade.

Terrorists, in ungoverned spaces, disseminate poisonous propaganda and training materials to attract troubled souls around the world to their cause.

I think what Osama bin Laden does is to take the fact that some peoples lack hope and lack opportunity, and twist it to his own ends.

The government targets 'Anonymous' for the same reason it targets al-Qaida - because they're the enemy.

What could be better in al-Qaeda's mind than to have India and Pakistan going at each other? What more to further their aims?

Al-Qaida is a worldwide organization. It's a continuous threat.

Do not forget that the Arab countries, starting with Algeria and Egypt, are the ones that have paid the heaviest toll because of Islamic terror.

There has been a failure to grasp how competing narratives fight for the attention of angry young Muslims, and we have grossly underestimated the appeal of the jihadist brand.