and the taliban will not let them leave the airport. >> now, the white house disputes the term hostage. but they also say they can't be certain about the situation on the ground, because one of the prices of an american withdrawal is the lack of intelligence resources. situations like this are going to happen. >> right. look, the term hostage is a fraught term in a situation like this when it could mean a focussed life or death situation. this illustrates the lack of control we have over the situation. and you know, they did take out over 100,000 people. it was very historic. one of the largest evacuations we've seen before. but a lot of it depended on the cooperation of the taliban. they did not fight us while we were doing that. they made it difficult at certain check points, but they helped the united states leave. now that handshake deal or at least aligned objectives is kind of done, because we hit the evacuation deadline and our military left. and so we are kind of, again, now in the situation where you have to recalibrate the balance.