Counterterrorism Policy Quotes

President Obama continues to support war. He continues to remove many basic civil liberties and human rights. He continues to condone drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan that kill women and children. He meets with his advisers every Tuesday morning and signs extrajudicial killings. To me, those are not the actions of a peace person.

I know what the counterterrorism feels like because I was there. But I also operated within limits. And within the United States government, we've decided long ago that there are limits on what we're going to do in the war against terrorism.

Mr Hitchens's policy has succeeded in making 10,000 new Bin Ladens.

The United States government does not negotiate with terrorists.

The Obama administration will never say 'radical Islam.' Never.

President Obama's decision not to go to Congress for help in establishing reasonable standards for the continued detention of Guantanamo detainees is a failure of leadership in the project of putting American law on a sound basis for a long-term confrontation with terrorism. It is bad for the country, for national security, and for civil liberties.

Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.

I've set a clear doctrine: America makes no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists, and you're an enemy of the United States of America.

As president I would actually name the enemy, radical Islamic terrorists. We've got a president [ Barack Obama] who wants to apologize for America and wants to criticize medieval Christian and wants to wage war on junk food. He won't even say the words "radical Islamic terrorists."

I think there was a pretty smooth hand-off from the administration of President Clinton to the administration of President Bush, particularly in the counterterrorism area. The reason I say that is because there was, for transitions, I think a stunning continuity.

In the United States the White House has appointed two different independent panels who had full access to classified information for the last 10 years that master balance has been in place in the United States, and they found that despite intercepting the calls - everybody in the country, - it had never stopped a single terrorist attack. So the question is, why would these officials be pursuing these policies, if we know they don't work, if they don't stop terrorism?

America has maintained a prohibition on negotiating with terrorists for good reason.

If the cops come upon a mass murder attack that is clearly instigated by Islamic doctrine, they are not permitted to conclude that it is terrorism because they have been directed by their superiors in law enforcement to maintain that Islam is against terrorism.

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.