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Here are 2 paragraphs from the link I posted above showing that the Vice President has said this before.

"""If we think back to that period before 9/11, the terrorists had learned two lessons, unfortunately. First of all, they came to believe they could strike us with impunity, because they had repeatedly -- in the World Trade Center bombing, in 1993; Khobar Towers, in 1996; the simultaneous bombing of two -- two of our embassies in East Africa, in 1998; the attack on the USS Cole, in 2000. If you think back to those events, there never was a very effective response from the United States against those who launched the attack. We fired off a few cruise missiles once, but they came to believe they could strike us with impunity.

Secondly, during that same period of time, the training camps were operating in Afghanistan where some 20,000 people were turned out -- terrorist trained, including those who struck us on 9/11. And of course, the terrorists also came to believe that if they struck us hard enough, they could change our policy, because they had. It happened in 1983 after we lost 241 Marines in Beirut -- within a matter of months, we were out of Lebanon. In 1993, of course, we had the situation in Mogadishu. We lost 19 soldiers during a battle in Mogadishu, and within weeks, we pulled all of our troops out of Somalia. So those two lessons, they could strike us with impunity and they could strike us to change our policy, is what they came to believe.

Now, it's my view that those attacks were not occasioned by the exercise of U.S. military strength. They were encouraged by the perception of weakness. (Applause.)"""