Pete Hoekstra Quotes

Your biggest threat is bin Laden!

The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.

I believe, based on the activities, and I am not an expert on terrorism by any stretch, but I believe that when they attacked the United States and they attacked New York and Washington, D.C., they thought they could defeat us.

The attack of September 11 can be described as a very intense “Faith-Based Initiative.”

Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most.

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.

Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was provocative and complicated for Pakistan, but only if you accept the idea that he was an acceptable member of Pakistani society.

September the 11th was a huge shock in the United States. It was the first time you had been hit at home in your own territory by terrorist on this scale.

It was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

September 11 awoke us to the threat of terrorism. It was forever bookmarked in our history as the day when life as Americans knew it, changed forever.

For twenty years, Islamic Jihadists have been attacking American interests around the world and we did not take them seriously until September 11th, 2001.

We live in a world where terror has become a too familiar part of our vocabulary. The terror of 9/11, in which al-Qaeda's attacks on America launched the nation into three wars - against Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Islamic State.

The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it's a global operation. It doesn't know national boundaries or national borders.

Bin Laden, who was in his country, attacked and damaged our Pentagon, and killed our soldiers right out here at the Pentagon. But his pentagon no longer exists. It is rubble.

Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.

Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS during his attack, the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11.

For a generation, terrorists learned they could make war on free nations without fear of war in return. On September 12, the terrorists got war in return.

There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.

We saw when those World Trade towers came down what these terrorists will do.

The U.S. has already suffered a devastating attack on September 11, 2001, and may again become a target.

On September 11 last year international terrorism entered a new dimension.

Since the events of September 11, we've rightfully changed our military strategy so we're now taking the fight to those individuals who aim to do us harm, rather than waiting for another atrocious attack to happen.

9/11 was basically caused by box cutters, and that changed the world.

Saudi Arabia was, until just a few years ago, probably one of the most safe countries on earth. And now the paper is daily full of activities and shootouts between Islamists who supported Osama bin Laden and the government there.

It's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, 'This is not a criminal act,' not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.