“I congratulated (President Obama) and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude.”
– Former President George W. Bush
“This mission sends a message about our will to stand up for what is right.”
– Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal
“Personally, I am very much relieved by the news that justice has been done to such a mastermind of international terrorism. … I would like to commend the work and the determined and principled commitment of many people in the world who have been struggling to eradicate international terrorism.”
– U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
“Last night’s news unified our country (much as the terrorist attacks of 2001 did.)”
– Republican House Speaker John Boehner
“Al-Qaida is going to lose rather than gain only if the revolutions (in the Arab world) succeed in producing proper democratic governments. … It still has franchises out there, and wherever there are injustices, it will have appeal.”
– Fares Braizat, pollster at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies
“You cannot wait us out. You cannot defeat us. But you can make the choice to abandon al-Qaida and participate in a peaceful political process.”
– U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
“Now that (Osama bin Laden)’s gone, I hope the U.S. has nothing to do with the Arab world.”
– Kholoud Samir, law student at Cairo University
“Bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida is not.”
– CIA Director Leon Panetta in a memo congratulating the agency for its role in the operation
“The killing of bin Laden outside of Afghanistan raises a question: If this is a fight to destroy al-Qaida, and al-Qaida is not there but in Pakistan, should Afghanistan really be the focus?”
– Vali Nasr, until recently a senior U.S. State Department adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan
“(Osama bin Laden) had nothing to offer to young people across the Middle East and Asia. … This is a clear choice being presented to the region. Do you go the way of cynical violence that has been shown to be a dead end? Or do you follow a path of peaceful protest to secure universal rights and freedoms?”
– Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications
“Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them.”
– Mohammed al-Qubaisi, grand mufti, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
“(Osama bin Laden’s death) removes a leader of diabolical proportions.”
– Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani
“(Osama bin Laden) being dead kind of closes the books on him. Nobody will be visiting his tomb.”
– Lenny Cresci, a former police officer in New York City who lost his brother, a NYC firefighter, on Sept. 11, 2001
“Whenever a terrorist is captured, he usually has a map of a big city in his pocket, and the city is usually New York.”
– New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
“The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden,”
– President Obama
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