9/11 was not an act of war. It was a criminal act. It was a simple. Criminal act by a bunch of lunatic fanatic violent people who needed to be tracked down and apprehended and tried exactly as you would with any other lunatic violent person, like we do with our own domestic terrorists, like the guy who bombed the Oklahoma federal building.

Bombing is a very dangerous option because it's so convenient and because at home it's politically acceptable because our boys aren't dying on the ground, it gets us into tremendous trouble, which, of course, in general is true of bombing.

The more we try to fix the security situation, the more we will drive these people, particularly the Pashtun, into implacable opposition. And whether the military solution is more bombing from Predators or from F-16s or more special forces on the ground, you know, attacking villages and inadvertently killing lots of civilians, it doesn't matter. As long as security comes first, the mission will fail because these people are sick and tired of a government that's oppressing them and a foreigner who's killing them.

9/11 was not an act of war. It was a criminal act. It was a simple. Criminal act by a bunch of lunatic fanatic violent people who needed to be tracked down and apprehended and tried exactly as you would with any other lunatic violent person, like we do with our own domestic terrorists, like the guy who bombed the Oklahoma federal building.