A Quote by Michael McCaul
I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.
Related Quotes
There are very few fighters in the ISIS organization in Iraq and Syria coming from the United States; most of them have either come from a region of the Middle East or from Europe.
51% of the French people - who are not very religious - were thinking that what "Charlie Hebdo" did was unwise. They aren't asking for a law to prevent Charlie Hebdo from publishing caricatures, but they are calling on its editors to be a bit more sensible.
We have this unfortunate habit in the United States of dividing terrorism into different categories. External, foreign terrorism, which manifests itself overseas or in the United States, or domestic terrorism.
Our process inside the United States government has gotten much better at making sure we touch all possible source of information about a refugee. The interview process has gotten more robust, so we've gotten our act together in that respect. The challenge remains, especially with respect to folks coming from Syria, we're unlikely to have anything in our holdings. That is, with people coming from Iraq, the United States government was there for a very long period of time. We had biometrics, we had source information. We're unlikely to have that kind of picture about someone coming from Syria.
I don't want to be overly dramatic, but Iraq and Syria are gone, and they aren't coming back, at least not as centralized states.
As far as the Internet is concerned, we're not talking about closing the Internet. I'm talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is, spotting it.
For many foreign fighters, the jihad in Iraq and Syria is a commuter war.
One great lesson from history we need to keep on re-learning. It is that sometimes your adversaries tell you exactly what they're going to do. How many times did [Osama] bin Laden say prior to 9/11 that he was coming after the U.S.? ISIS made clear that when they established their caliphate in Iraq and Syria, they were coming after the United States too.
It's very hard to understand just what our strategy is in Syria, frankly, and on Iraq that this is Iraq's war, that the role of the United States is to help Iraq, to arm, train, support, provide air support, but this has to be Iraq's war.
The phenomena here is the foreign fighter threat, the revolving door from Europe to the region in Iraq and Syria and back through Turkey, back into Europe. And that's what happened in the Paris attackers.
Currently, the United States has troops in dozens of countries and is actively fighting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen (with the occasional drone strike in Pakistan). In addition, the United States is pledged to defend 28 countries in NATO. It is unwise to expand the monetary and military obligations of the United States given the burden of our $20 trillion debt.
200,000 ISIS tweets a day, 1,000 investigations in all 50 states. It's really hard to stop all of it. But we have to get control over this Internet propaganda that is poisoning the minds of the United States.
The Iranian government prevented journalists from marching in solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre yet it organized flag-burning protests against the French embassy, that hasn't ingratiated them to a French nuclear negotiating team that is deeply cynical about the nature of the Iranian regime.
In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America. For me, I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. The root cause of the terrorism is the stuff that you as a government allow to happen and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it's easy for us because it's really just some oil, which we can really get on our own.
It was not the United States who invaded Kuwait; it was Iraq. It was not the United States that went to war with Iran; it was Iraq. It was not the United States that fired chemical weapons at Iran; it was Iraq. And it was not the United States that murdered innocent Iraqi citizens with chemical weapons; it was Iraq.
In October 2008, American commandos launched a cross-border raid into Syria to capture an Islamic militant known as Abu Ghadiya. He was accused of being one of al Qaeda in Iraq's main smugglers of fighters and money between Iraq and Syria.
Related Authors
Alexander Hamilton Quotes
American
Politician
Benjamin Franklin Quotes
American
Politician
Bernie Sanders Quotes
American
Politician
David Brooks Quotes
American
Politician
Hillary Clinton Quotes
American
Politician
Jill Stein Quotes
American
Politician
John F. Kerry Quotes
American
Politician
John McCain Quotes
American
Politician
Marco Rubio Quotes
American
Politician
Mitt Romney Quotes
American
Politician
Narendra Modi Quotes
Indian
Politician
Newt Gingrich Quotes
American
Politician
Paul Ryan Quotes
American
Politician
Rand Paul Quotes
American
Politician
Ron Paul Quotes
American
Politician
Ted Cruz Quotes
American
Politician