Targeted Operations Quotes

We will pursue terrorists everywhere. At an airport – okay, at an airport. If we catch them in a lavatory, in an outhouse, we will take them out there with their pants down.

Identifying terrorists on the battlefield is relatively simple.

Every responsible chief in the CIA knows that the more covert the action, the greater the need for a clear policy and a defined target.

We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.

In the 101st Airborne Division headquarters in Mosul, we had a sign on the wall. It was a question that we would ask ourselves before every new operation or policy initiative. It asked: Will this policy or operation take more bad guys off the streets than it creates by its conduct?

In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" - exactly what, pray tell, is that? - to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.

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

A terrorist can attack at any time at any place using a range of techniques. It is physically impossible to defend at every time in every location against every conceivable technique of terrorism. Therefore, if your goal is to stop it, you cannot stop it by defense. You can only stop it by taking the battle to the terrorists, where they are and going after them.