“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