i heard the 4500 number the ambassador spoke to. when the real discussions earlier this year were taking place on maintaining troop presence or complete withdrawal, the number i kept hearing was 2500. they could maintain with a relatively small footprint, shore up the afghan government and support the military in a way that prevents taliban from full scale takeover. the people that were against that argued there was already agreement in place with the taliban in february of 2020 that the u.s., there would be full withdrawal. the reason the taliban hadn't been attacking americans and nato allies in the year plus since the agreement was because of agreement they were adhering to one piece of it, wanted the u.s. to get out. if the u.s. decided to stay, the taliban would start attacking. we don't know. nobody knows what the taliban would have done had the u.s. decided to stay. across the board, i heard