Mark Esper Quotes

Seal Team Six is a different unit than the rest of the SEAL teams inasmuch as they concentrate primarily on one thing, counter-terrorism, hostage rescue.

The Special Operations community is rooted in unconventional warfare.

The Green Berets of U.S. Special Forces 5th Group - known as 'the Legion' - who led the anti-Taliban campaign represent a textbook case of a successful Special Forces campaign.

In the public's mind, Special Forces are often confused with the 'door kickers' of Special Operations Forces - such as SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force - who are the United States' elite counterterrorism operators.

You cannot deny the fact that, in the United States, there are some really great guys with rich experience in overt and covert special operations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

Barack Obama's military triumphs will come neither in long wars nor even short ones, but in a series of raids.

As we are all aware, Special Operations Forces, SOF, are playing an increasingly essential role as we continue to fight and, more importantly, win the war on terror.

The U.S., often in secret, carries out counterterrorism missions all the time, with drones in places like Yemen and Somalia.

Any information about U.S. special operations forces is highly sensitive.

Maybe it's the spy novelist in me looking for a future plot, but I hope the U.S. and its allies are thinking how to operate 'unconventionally' in Iraq and Syria in ways that undermine the Islamic State.

Offensive operations and hunting down the enemy is an integral part of any counterinsurgency approach.

We need a military strategy to defeat terrorists on the ground.

When the president went around the table to the country's national security leadership, Hillary was clear: We have to go get bin Laden. And our Special Operations Forces did just that.

The Navy Seals don't travel with 200 people, they wouldn't be able to execute the kind of tip-of-the-spear missions they do.

As the Obama administration negotiates with the Karzai government and with Pakistan, we may be tempted to make commitments that, in the name of nation-building, restrict our ability to fight terrorists. If we must involve the Afghan government in every night raid, our operations will slow and targets will escape.

Unconventional warfare needs to remain the heart and soul of U.S. Special Operations Command and component commands.

We need to get serious about defeating ISIS; we just aren't serious about it yet. I would be very serious about getting it done. I know how to do it. We need to take the fight to them on the battlefield in a more serious way.

Improve human intelligence to get Osama bin Laden.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

As a former career intelligence professional, I have a profound appreciation for the value of intelligence. Intelligence disrupts terrorist plots and thwarts attacks. Intelligence saves lives.

We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.

I was attached to the SAS from time to time, but we are forbidden - former, present, or future - to discuss any specific operations.

The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.

The mission - the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda. But we have to make sure there's not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.

I mean, it's not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden. It's the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time - thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad guys and interrogated them and so-forth.