so far, wolf, that answer appears to be, no, there has not. u.s. forces have not engaged the taliban. that is one of the critical issues in making sure the airport can continue to function and that there is no rapid deterioration of the situation. wolf, the worst case scenario is if the airport falls. then to get anyone out, it requires retaking the airport. yeah. the contingencies are enormous right now and awful all around. thank you so much, over at the pentagon. let s get more on all of this. jim sciutto is with us, cnn military analyst, retired lieutenant general is with us. cnn political analyst david and clarissa ward is also back. she s back on the ground in kabul. jim sciutto, did president biden really say the buck stops with me while at the same time pointing the finger at a very long list of other players? listen, it is a fact that president trump initiated this withdrawal.
some of what this administration has done, how they ve done it, and i think beginning with your first question to me, making such bold pronouncements a few months ago when the uncertainty of this was, to me, pretty clear. i mean the fact is if you ve been following any news, over the last two years, the taliban was getting stronger actually over the last ten years, but certainly over the last two years, the taliban was getting stronger, and that was measured by any measurement you want to apply to it. yeah. so i would not have been that bullish in how i presented it. but there were no good options here. let me ask you, though, one of the things that we re monitoring right now is what happens to the hamid karzai airport that is being used to evacuate americans, other westerners, and so on. what happens if that airport falls, do you think, mr. secretary? well, if it falls, then it
does create a very dangerous dynamic because who, then, controls the airport? the taliban. you can t get anything in or out without their acquiescence and without their approval. you could also see a failure in the process. the taliban are not very sophisticated, and airports are sophisticated places for all the reasons we understand. this could be even in a greater, greater tragedy if that airport falls, and i think you ve got to accept the reality that it very well may fall. then if we get into a shooting part of this, defending that airport, then we ve got a real problem because we re going to have 6,000 troops there. but do you think it was a mistake and we ve got a real mess. do you think it was a mistake, though, to allow the taliban to sweep across the country and take charge this
a few hours ago, the embassy sent out a security alert warning there are reports of the airport taking fire. i want to bring in cnn s pentagon correspondent oren liebermann. this is a very precarious situation. where are u.s. troops in-country right now? what does the pentagon say about plans if control of this airport falls, which i suppose like everything else that we ve seen, is possible? reporter: so let s be clear that if hamid karzai n international airport were to fall, that is the worst-case scenario. the need to retake an airport from insurgents or from some other group that tries to take it, that requires more troops than are on the ground now, and that s the worst-case scenario, but that s not what s happening right now. the bulk of u.s. troops are at hamid karzai international airport. there are some 3,000 troops on the ground right now. we ve just learned in the past few minutes that secretary of defense lloyd austin approved another 1,000 troops. so it will be a total o
is considering the potential need to send even more u.s. troops into afghanistan. president biden has authorized the deployment of 5,000 troops to afghanistan, and that includes troops already on the ground. cnn s oren liebermann joining me from the pentagon. how soon will the troops be arriving, the additional one? the first group of 5,000 troops, some of them already in country in afghanistan. many more on the way to assist in the evacuation of embassy staff and others from afghanistan. the key question here is what happens to the airport and can it be secured? if the airport falls to the taliban, this becomes a wo worst-case scenario. we re not at that point, but a key issue to watch. there were already about 1,000 troops in the country. 3,000 more came in, 2,000 marines and 1,000 soldiers. they went to the airport to secure it. another thousand troops were pulled from the 82nd air borne