Top 1200 Al-Qaeda Quotes & Sayings

Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They're playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They're just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.

I totally disagree with the premise that al Qaeda is on the path to defeat. Quite the contrary, al Qaeda has deliberately decentralized its operations - not because of the relentless attacks we have had on its national leadership in Pakistan, but because its strategic objective is to dominate and control Muslim countries in the region.

The Taliban didn't attack us on 9/11 - Al-Qaeda did. That's why I and other people joined the military - to go after Al Qaeda. Not the Taliban.

A war on Al-Qaeda could have been won with a decisive military strike in Tora Bora during December 2001, but American fighters at Tora Bora were refused requests for more forces when they trapped Al-Qaeda there; the Pentagon was busy husbanding resources for the Iraqi invasion.

The condition that the Taliban part with al Qaeda is not just a condition, it is an objective. We must convince them that al Qaeda ideology and dogma will not help them.

Certainly there’s a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they would be talking to Al Qaeda, that there would be some Al Qaeda there or that Saddam Hussein might even be, you know, discussing gee, I wonder since I don’t have any scuds and since the Americans are coming at me, I wonder if I could take advantage of Al Qaeda? How would I do it? Is it worth the risk? What could they do for me?

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.

All eyes, all attention at the federal level, are on al Qaeda and the war on terror. Fact is, al Qaeda wouldn't last a day in parts of Philadelphia. I've got gangsters with .45s that would run them out of town.

If you look at all those terrorist groups - I'm talking, going back, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, ISIS - they're all proxy armies in an Islamic civil war.

More likely, there were probably some real divisions within the Iranian government - some groups wanted to ally with al Qaeda against us, others didn't want to have anything to do with that. So I think that debate resulted in no decision being made for awhile. The problem was they left the al-Qaeda folks in Iran in the hands of their intelligence services and Revolutionary Guard, who didn't really keep an eye on them - and may not have kept an eye on them on purpose.

In terms of Iraq, al Qaeda valued Iraq because we destroyed a government it wanted destroyed and because we put soldiers on the ground and forces that they could attack. Al Qaeda is basically an insurgent organization that was formed on the model of the Afghan groups. And being bred in that war, they value a contiguous safe haven as much as anything else.

You know who's upset now with ISIS? Al Qaeda. It's because ISIS is getting more attention than Al Qaeda. So now, Saturday night will be Ayman al-Zawahiri bobblehead night.

We can't say whether Tehran is supporting Al Qaeda, but we do know that al-Qaida people come here from Pakistan through Iran.

Asking the question whether the mainstream media has a liberal or conservative bias is like asking whether al Qaeda uses too much oil in their hummus. I might think they use a little bit too much oil; some people might think it's a little dry. But the problem with al Qaeda is they want to kill us. And the problem with the mainstream media is that it has these other biases that are much more important.

Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq. There’s no question that the leader of the military operations of the U.S. called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda.

The majority of fighters now are Al-Qaeda. If you want to support them, you are supporting Al-Qaeda, you are creating havoc in the region, and if this region is not stable, the whole world cannot be stable.

(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.

I think, in fact, the situation with respect to al Qaeda, to say that, you know, that was a big attack we had on 9/11, but it's not likely again, I just think that's dead wrong. I think the biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind. And I think al Qaeda is out there even as we meet, trying to figure out how to do that.

Al Qaeda is closely aligned with the Chechens.

We know that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has some very dangerous, very important leaders who are tied directly to the top leadership of al Qaeda central, including a man who was formerly Osama bin Laden's secretary.

If the American administration want to support Al-Qaeda - go ahead. That's what we have to tell them, go ahead and support Al-Qaeda, but don't talk about rebels and free Syrian army.

Denying Al Qaeda safe haven was the right decision.

His regime has had high-level contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists.

Some Pakistanis fought for the Taliban. Pakistani extremist groups provided infrastructural support to Al Qaeda. There was a coming and going of Al Qaeda militants and leaders between Afghanistan and Pakistan for several years. All that has really happened is that Al Qaeda has escaped from Afghanistan come into Pakistan, got in touch with their contacts and friends in these extremist groups, which then provided them with safe houses, cars, and not just in the border areas but also in the cities. Rooting out Al Qaeda in Pakistan now is where the main battle is being fought.

By the end of 2008, clearly the Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgency had been relatively stabilized. And in the Al Qaeda's mind, they were defeated.

Al Qaeda is on the run, partly because the United States is in Afghanistan, pushing on al Qaeda, and working internationally to cut off the flow of funds to al Qaeda. They are having a difficult time. They failed in this endeavor.

If the Arab Spring was a large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda's ideology, the death of bin Laden was an equally large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda the organization.

Abu Musab al Zarqawi had such a view of holy war. More barbaric, more monstrous even than Osama bin Laden. So much so that Bin Laden opposed many of his ideas. And he did not join al Qaeda, except for one brief period after 2004 where he agreed to be badged as al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Al-Qaeda, which means 'the base' in English, lost its base and training camps in Afghanistan, while its leaders were on the run, captured, or dead. One year after the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda was still on life support.

There's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

If al-Qaeda had not had a home in Afghanistan, maybe 9/11 would never have taken place. God forbid if al-Qaeda gets another strong foothold in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.S. Cole and bombed several U.S. embassies in East Africa in the late 1990s. We knew who did it, but we didn't go after them. Instead, we beefed up security at our embassies and changed the Navy's rules of engagement. It only served to embolden Al Qaeda.

I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency.

We didn't say that 80% [of terrorists], for example, or the majority or the vast majority, are foreigners. We said the vast majority are Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda offshoot organizations in this region.

If you don't understand what al Qaeda was trying to do on 9/11, if you don't have a sense of who Osama bin Laden is as a person, if you don't have a sense of what al Qaeda, the organization, was on 9/11, 9/11 appears to be more or less inexplicable.

Al Qaeda still remains a threat.

Based on the people l've spoken to, I think the impression is: Is America safer from Al Qaeda? Yes. Is America weaker as a nation because we have overspent and over-focused on Al Qaeda? Yes. I think that would be the conclusion that people seem to have come to and that I tend to agree with.

Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda - worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was.

What made al-Awlaki so influential is that, unlike a number of leaders of al Qaeda such as Osama bin Laden, he was a cleric, so he could present himself as a leading religious figure. Second, because al-Awlaki had spent much of his adult life in the States, he communicated with his followers in colloquial, accessible American English.

By the end of 2008, clearly, the al Qaeda and Sunni insurgency had been relatively stabilized. And in the al Qaeda's mind, they were defeated. They actually said that in many of their transmissions that we were able to pick up. And the Shia militia, largely those trained by the Iranians in Basra and also in Sadr City, had been defeated.

I've dealt with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

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

Big Pharma's the Taliban... They're Al Qaeda.

Saudi Arabia might proceed toward Sharia slower than Al-Qaeda wants. Al-Qaeda wants pedal-to-the-metal, nothing else in focus, we’re heading to Sharia, and the Saudis might not be going there fast enough, so Al-Qaeda hits them.

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.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is the largest external operation force within al Qaeda.

There are no barriers to entries. Think of this as Linux in terms of software. Anyone can have part of the operating system so long as you pledge allegiance to the ideas. Previously, if you wanted to join al Qaeda, you had to travel to an al Qaeda safe haven, probably in northern Pakistan or Afghanistan. Now all you have to do is get a gun, choose a target, and carry out an attack.

Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They're playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They're just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain. That's what we're up against in Iraq. We're up against a suicide supply chain.

If there's been any use of nerve gas it's the rebels that used it. If there has been a use of chemical weapons it was Al-Qaeda that used the chemical weapons - who gave al-Qaeda the chemical weapons? Here's my theory, Israel gave them the chemical weapons.

Al Qaeda has overplayed their hand. What the al Qaeda do when they go into a town or village or a neighborhood inside a major city is they get a stranglehold on the people themselves. They force the men to wear beards and the women to be properly costumed and essentially completely covered up.

It is important for everybody to insure that the process will go on, that the ceasefire will hold. Of course, there is no ceasefire against Daesh [the Islamic State], Jabhat al Nusra, and Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda has significance beyond its numbers, frankly. And so for us, our 24-hour-a-day objective is to seek out those al Qaeda cells. And, as we seek them out, to target them and eliminate them. And we're doing that 24 hours a day.

The United States is at war with the al Qaeda terrorist group. Al Qaeda is not a nation-state and it has not signed the Geneva Conventions. It shows no desire to obey the laws of war; if anything it directly violates them by disguising themselves as civilians and attacking purely civilian targets to cause massive casualties.

The fact that there are now many entities that may have some loose affiliation with a former core Al Qaeda - or who have decided to fashion themselves as an affiliate or follower in the Al Qaeda jihadist tradition - as well as groups that are just inspired by the concept that they could also be the perpetrators of mass killing, means that there is a spectrum of threats.

Any strike will be as direct support to Al-Qaeda offshoot that's called Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. You're right about this. It's going to be direct support.

Accusations fit on Greenwald really sounds like he's against all surveillance unless you can find a guy with the Al Qaeda card, wearing an Al Qaeda baseball cap, an Al Qaeda uniform.

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.

One of the most missed components of the entire insurgency in Iraq was that Syria and Bashar al-Assad facilitated Al Qaeda's operations in Iraq. They actually headquartered the Iraq Ba'ath Party and all of their escaped generals in Damascus.

[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.

Remember back then we thought about al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a few other places? well, we've seen al Qaeda metastasize. It is now a global scourge. And you have the ascendancy of ISIL. The combination of those two groups -- their appeal to the lone wolfs and we see them acting in Belgium and in France and in Canada and the United States so the threat factors and the nature of the threats are far more complicated and far more serious today than on September 12, 2001.