Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Before 9/11, al-Qaeda was an organization of global reach.
Often it is important to listen to what people aren't saying.
Seymour Hersh is one of the giants of investigative journalism.
ISIS is even at war with its most natural ally, al Qaeda in Syria.
Investigations by special prosecutors can take on a life of their own.
Compounding Iraq's problem is that its economy is highly dependent on oil.
The Turkish government will never tolerate the creation of a Kurdish state.
Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.
Virulent anti-Semitism is, of course, a staple of militant Islamist ideology.
Bin Laden studied economics and public administration before he turned to a life of jihad.
There is considerable merit to the notion of treating gun violence as a public health matter.
Apostasy is a grave crime in Islam and punishable by death in the eyes of members of al Qaeda.
The American incarceration of Sheikh Rahman was a hot-button issue for al Qaeda for many years.
In late May 2016, an ISIS spokesman called for attacks in the West during the month of Ramadan.
There's some pretty good academic research that suggest that what Americans don't like is losing.
For many terrorists, carrying out an attack allowed them to become the heroes of their own story.
Assad owes his continuation in power to the intervention of Russia in 2015 to prop up his regime.
At one point people in al Qaeda were actually drawing monthly paychecks when they were based in Sudan.
We climbed the stairs to the third floor, where Osama bin Laden died early in the morning of May 2, 2011.
Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS during his attack, the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11.
Syria is attracting a lot more Westerners than the Iraq War ever did because it's the perfect Sunni jihad.
Occasionally, Donald Trump says something that is politically incorrect but which also happens to be true.
Ground operations are inherently very risky in Yemen. The two previous JSOC raids in Yemen were both in 2014.
On the campaign trail, candidate Trump occasionally raised the idea of creating 'safe zones' for Syrian civilians.
Most Muslims don't want to live in some Taliban-style utopia, which is what bin Laden and allied groups are offering.
As early as 1993, members of bin Laden's group had been planning an attack on the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.
Bin Laden had come to the delusional conclusion that the United States was as weak as the Soviet Union had once been.
What did U.S. officials have to lose by saying that bin Laden was being protected by the Pakistanis, if it were true?
Today, we are not likely to need to organize local militias for our defense now we have something called the Pentagon.
How can you prevent an attack by returning foreign fighters if you are not cognizant of their names and links to ISIS?
In short, the hunt for bin Laden could not have been accomplished without every form of American intelligence-gathering.
America has not traditionally been the cramped, frightened country of Trump's executive order that bans Syrian refugees.
I was the only outsider to visit the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden lived before the Pakistani military demolished it.
The reality is that Trump's focus on immigrants is to misconceive of the terrorist problem that exists in the United States.
American jihadists are generally motivated by a mix of factors, including dislike of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world.
The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway.
In 1999, NATO did impose a no-fly zone in Kosovo without seeking a U.N. resolution to carry out air strikes on Serbian forces.
Contrary to what the Americans frequently reiterated, al-Qaeda did not have any relationship with Saddam Hussein or his regime.
Bin Laden's role in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s had made him a hero around the Middle East.
Because 9/11 was carried out by 19 foreign-born Arab hijackers, many assume that all terrorists who attack the West are foreigners.
9/11 was a sort of hinge event in American history, and all jihadi terrorist plots or attacks are kind of filtered through that lens.
The less the ISIS 'caliphate' exists as a physical entity, the less the group can claim it is the 'Islamic State' that it purports to be.
Donald Trump's own mother Mary escaped the bone-crushing poverty of Scotland's remote Outer Hebrides for the promise of New York in 1929.
If the party of Lincoln wishes to become the party of intolerance, selecting Trump to be its presidential candidate is a good way forward.
I am very suspicious of the notion that somehow bin Laden was a media creation... Bin Laden's actions made him into a big deal. Not the media.
The Trump administration launched the cruise missile strikes in Syria, an act of war, without a U.N. resolution or Congressional authorization.
The Sunni militants that make up ISIS are not the underlying problem in Syria and Iraq, but rather they are a symptom of other deeper problems.
And in the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound surrounded by his wives and children and far from the front lines of his holy war.
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein brutally repressed all forms of opposition to his regime, and before the Iraq War, al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq.
Western Mosul is the historic heart of one of the oldest cities in the world. Its narrow streets and alleyways are impassable for armored vehicles.