At one point people in al Qaeda were actually drawing monthly paychecks when they were based in Sudan.
Peter BergenThere's some pretty good academic research that suggest that what Americans don't like is losing.
Peter BergenIf you don't understand what al Qaeda was trying to do on 9/11, if you don't have a sense of who Osama bin Laden is as a person, if you don't have a sense of what al Qaeda, the organization, was on 9/11, 9/11 appears to be more or less inexplicable.
Peter BergenBin Laden's death is just a punctuation point on a set of problems they've had for a long time. I think the prognosis for al-Qaida and groups like it is really bad, and that's a good thing.
Peter Bergen