A Quote by Peter Bergen

Bush administration officials, of course, deny that they didn't take the threat urgently enough, but there is no debating that in their public utterances, private meetings, and actions, the al Qaeda threat barely registered.

Peter Bergen

Quote Topics

Actions Administration Al Al Qaeda Barely Bush Bush Administration Course Debating Deny Enough Meetings Officials Private Public Registered Take Threat

Quote Author

Peter Bergen
American - Journalist
Born: December 12, 1962

The inattention of the Bush administration to the threat from al Qaeda had results. Shortly before 9/11, Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, turned down FBI requests for some 400 additional counterterrorism personnel.

Peter Bergen

[Saddam Hussein] is a threat because he is dealing with al-Qaeda. . . . A true threat facing our country is that an al-Qaeda-type network trained and armed by Saddam could attack America and not leave one fingerprint.

George W. Bush

I think isolationism is a mistake, no matter what party you see it in. We have to remember that there are two threats to our freedom: there's a threat that comes from the federal government, from the Obama Administration policies... but there's also a huge and significant threat from al-Qaeda.

Liz Cheney

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.

Susan Rice

We`re facing a very different sort of threat now, a more amorphous threat, al Qaeda, terrorism, and so on. And so the military has abandoned the two-war strategy.

Joe Klein

I think it is important for Europe to understand that even though I am president and George Bush is not president, Al Qaeda is still a threat.

Barack Obama

The biggest threat we face is the possibility of terrorist groups like al Qaeda equipped with weapons of mass destruction, with nukes, bugs or gas. That was the threat after 9/11 and when we took down Saddam Hussein we eliminated Iraq as a potential source of that.

Dick Cheney

The threat that ISIL presents and poses to the United States is very different in kind, in type and degree than al Qaeda. ISIL is not your parents' al Qaeda. It's a very different model.

James Comey

Al Qaeda still remains a threat.

Leon Panetta

The threat is there. It's very real and it's continuing. And what the Obama people are doing, in effect, is saying, well, we don't need those tough policies that we had. That says either they didn't work, which we know is not the case - they did work, they kept us safe for seven years - or that now somehow the threat's gone away. There's no longer a threat out there, we don't have to be as tough and aggressive as the Bush administration was.

Dick Cheney

The rise of ISIS starts with a Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who founded ISIS' parent organization, al Qaeda, in Iraq. What gave Zarqawi the opportunity to create al Qaeda in Iraq? It was, of course, George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Peter Bergen

Al-Qaeda's resurgence brings out the worst in the Bush Administration's math and logic.

Jon Stewart

The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.

George W. Bush

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

James Comey

I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.