Quotes About Security

The FBI issued 216 secret, internal threat warnings between January 1 and September 10, 2001, of which 6 mentioned possible attacks against airports or airlines. The State Department issued 9 separate warnings during the same period to embassies and citizens abroad, including 5 that highlighted a general threat to Americans all over the world. The Federal Aviation Administration issued 15 notices of possible terrorist threats against American airlines.19

The CIA prepared a briefing paper on July 10 for senior Bush administration officials: "Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that [bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."24

America failed during the late 1990s to forge an effective antiterrorism partnership with India, whose regional interests, security resources, and vast Muslim population offered great potential for covert penetrations of Afghanistan.

It was now clear that Yousef and his colleagues had developed their terrorist plans by studying American airline security procedures. "If terrorists operating in this country are similarly methodical, they will identify serious vulnerabilities in the security system for domestic flights." The National Intelligence Estimate made no mention of Osama bin Laden.36

September 11 made plain how the security of ordinary Afghans was connected to the security of ordinary Americans and Europeans.

McNeill argued, the war hadn't changed. They had to be patient. Privately, McNeill figured it would take up to two decades to put Afghan forces in a position where they could defend the country adequately on their own.

Inside C.T.C., Black said that their job now was to explain to the president and his cabinet what had just happened to the United States, who did it, and what might be coming next.

The people of Afghanistan, they are Muslims, and nobody is rejecting Islam here," he said. "This is very easy for the people of Afghanistan to come together and solve this. America came here for what? They came for women? No. They came for education? No. They came because they were attacked from Afghanistan and they sought security. This is their right. But they should not occupy or interfere with Afghanistan.

Bush asked whether killing bin Laden would end the problem. Pavitt and Tenet replied that it would make an impact but not end the peril.

Massoud doubted they had time. "If President Bush doesn't help us," he told a press conference in Strasbourg a few days later, "then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very soon—and it will be too late."5

I'M TIRED OF SWATTING FLIES," President Bush told Condoleezza Rice in the Oval Office that spring after another in a series of briefings about al Qaeda threats. "I want to play offense."13

He told Williams that he appreciated what the United States was trying to do in Afghanistan. "The day you leave, the Taliban will be back," he predicted.

They had provided insights for the article in the President's Daily Brief received by George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, headlined BIN LADIN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN US. "It's Bin Laden," Blee insisted to his colleagues. They were still arguing among themselves at 9:03 a.m. when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the World Trade Center's South Tower.6

the conspirators had completed experiments on potent liquid explosives manufactured from hydrogen peroxide, hexamine, and citric acid. Their formula could disguise a powerful bomb as a colored sports drink, to be detonated by ordinary AA batteries.

I don't think we really had made the leap in our mind that we are no longer safe behind these two great oceans," Armitage said later.9

The USS Cole was a billion-dollar command and attack ship equipped with computer-linked radar that could follow more than one hundred airplanes, ships, and missile targets at once. It had relatively little defense, however, against three suicide bombers in a thousand-dollar skiff.

The clandestine alliance between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was grounded in history. Each was a young, insecure nation that saw Islam as central to its identity. Pakistani troops had been hired by the Saudis in the past for security deployments in the kingdom. The Saudi air force had secretly provided air cover over Karachi during Pakistan's 1971 war with India.4

In their early briefings, Clarke's office described bin Laden as an "existential" threat to the United States, meaning that the danger he posed went beyond the dozens or hundreds of casualties al Qaeda might inflict in serial bombing attacks. Bin Laden and his followers sought mass American fatalities and would use weapons of mass destruction in American cities if they could, Clarke and officers at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center firmly believed.

In the midst of this unsettling frenzy there is something we all need to know. God is your banker. God is your social security. God is your health-care provider. You don't need a bigger government. You have a great God. And unlike silver-tongued politicians, He can be trusted to keep His promises. I vote for Him.

God is our refuge and strength, He is well proved to be abundantly available in tight places.

You touch a safe the way you touch a woman," he

All you have to do is speak up. Tell him straight up: "I need you here to protect and provide for us, to give us security in our lives, to help raise these children, to set an example for this boy, who needs to see what real men do, and for this girl, who needs to know what a real man is so she can find one of her own someday. I need you to be the head of this family." Lay it out like this, and your requirements will trump his mother's every time.

Don't be afraid to lose him, because if a man truly loves you, he's not going anywhere.

When in a relationship, a real man doesn't make his woman jealous of others, he makes others jealous of his woman.