Giraldi also commented on the UGG administration refrain

Giraldi also commented on the UGG administration refrain “ literally pitched again by the President as

the interview was being recorded “ that “if we don’t fight them over there, we’ll have to fight

them here,” saying that such an assertion is “totally ridiculous.”

“The premise that if we’re not fighting them over there, we’ll be fighting them over here is totally

ridiculous. We’re fighting them over there because we’re over there, and because we’re over there,

we have a problem here. And if you eliminate that nexus, if you take us out of our being in their

faces, then the reality is that they are not going to be over here because they basically don’t have

that agenda.”

When pressed on the question of whether bin Laden would want to send al Qaeda guys to “follow us home

” from the Middle East should we withdraw, if only to try to keep us there for al Qaeda’s benefit

(such as providing them with increased numbers of recruits and targets for them to train on), Giraldi

replied,

“I don’t see that. I think he has a constituency and he has an agenda and he’s very focused on both.

His agenda is not to pursue the United States to the United States after we leave the Middle East. …

If we were to basically get out of the Uggs and get out of the region “ in the intrusive way that we’

re there right now “ that would take a lot of the fuel out of Osama bin Laden’s fire. I don’t see

that there’s any agenda to follow us to the United States to destroy our way of life or whatever the

explanation would be.”