0 during this process, the views of all of the joint chiefs of staff, all of us, the centcom commander, general mckenzie, general miller, and myself were all given serious consideration by the administration. we provided a broad range of options and our assessment of their potential outcomes. we couched that in cost, benefit, risk-to-force, risk-to-mission. all of that was evaluated against the national security objectives of the united states. on 14 april, the president of the united states, president biden, announced his decision, and the u.s. military received a change of mission, to retrograde all u.s. military forces, maintain a small contingency force of 6 to 700 to protect the embassy in kabul, until the department of state could coordinate contractor security support, and also to assist turkey to maintain the hamid karzai international airport and to transition the u.s. mission to over the horizon counterterrorism sport and security force systems. it is clear, it is obvious to
coming into the united states without going through a full and thorough screening process. jason, what are your thoughts about the whole vetting process? there is virtually it is virtually impossible to do the vetting coming out of afghanistan. the infrastructure was near absolute zero, unless you have biometrics. oh, you mean like the taliban have now because of what we left behind in bag ram and all of those other places? it is a joke. yeah, and when you talk about these backlogs of all of these people and at one point, there were only three and they have a
fact it was done overnight, practically, well, withdrawing from ba l practically, well, withdrawing from bag ram practically, well, withdrawing from bag ram airport overnight, it simply pulled bag ram airport overnight, it simply pulled the bag ram airport overnight, it simply pulled the rug from underneath the fairly weak and unstable afghan national fairly weak and unstable afghan national forces, fairly weak and unstable afghan nationalforces, so fairly weak and unstable afghan national forces, so they civilly surrendered all over the place. but the airlift surrendered all over the place. but the airlift has been an incredible success the airlift has been an incredible success. to have organised such a mass success. to have organised such a mass evacuation of people at short notice mass evacuation of people at short notice and mass evacuation of people at short notice and in terrible conditions and working with the compliance of a force that and working with the co
crisis. it does seem obvious that our government did not anticipate the situation in kabul at the international airport. and the mass exodus that would be attempted this. had we attempted this, we would have, for example, left open bag ram air base, which is the point governor kasich made a few moments ago. so does our president appreciate the severity of this crisis? yes, obviously. my concern is that it could get worse before it gets better. we may not have seen yet the worst of this crisis. i am concerned that there will be in the short term factions within the taliban government that arise. some moderate or moderate faction right now seems to be the most overt publically, but there is probably a more militant faction of the taliban right now that may stir up
thing, even when you look at the anonymous on the record quote we got from the quote, intel community when nobody would put their name on it. right. if you sort of pull back on exactly what it was general milley was saying, he is acknowledging there was at least one, a number of assessments here. intelligence never tells you what is exactly going to happen, tells you probability, potentially likelihood different things may happen and gives you various scenes. we know one of the scenarios was afghan government and military would collapse, taliban would be able to take over. one of those scenarios included them doing it within weeks of the u.s. military leaving. look where we are. bag ram closed down end of june, beginning of july. most u.s. troops were out when bagram closed down. there was a transition ceremony in mid july in kabul where the long time commander, general scott miller, stepped down. for all in tents and purposes