details of what we re doing to help facilitate the passage and assist the passage of americans getting onto the field. we want to preserve options that we can going forward. the threat outside the airport is dynamic and dangerous. we won t detail everything we re doing and every opportunity we re taking advantage of. u.s. force efs are side-by-side with taliban? trying to get a vishall of what it looks like. we aren t out there side-by-side and not about joint patrols. you can erase that visual. that s not what is happening. i have forget going. thank you very much. appreciate it. our goal is to come back here again at around 1500 for an afternoon update and we ll keep you apprised if and when that changes. thank you very much. harris: all right.
public has a right to noe. i want to understand how we should be thinking about where the u.s. military is in that environment. i would tell you we already consider our troops in harm s way at the airport. it is a dangerous situation no question about that. we re not taking any of these threats for granted. and the commanders on the ground have the wherewithal to move their forces as they see fit to again do essentially three things. make sure the airport is secure and can be defended. make sure that air operations can continue to carry on at the clip we need them to carry on. and c, this is an important one, to make sure that american citizens at-risk afghans and siv applicants can get access to the gate and process and entry to the feed. the three primary tasks. and they know what the tasks are and can move forces, can
tons of calls every day, people that are in afghanistan, partner members that aren t getting vetted. i m getting calls about them as well. members of congress can communicate directly to the state department and it is imperative that we do that so we know who is still in the country, where they might be. harris: quickly, i want to move on to the next point here and that s the actual things that are happening on the ground to our people but what is it like communicating to the state department right now? it is so hard. i will be honest. i m very, very frustrated. you can tell in my voice i m very frustrated with this. we have a number of people that communicate, friends of mine reaching out saying my interpreter is outside the perimeter at the airport. we re going through the process of submitting names. i know there was a day and a half where my staff told me the
house and neighborhood by neighborhood identifying american citizens and people who worked and they are intimidating and threatening and beating, preventing their facilitation to the airport and you know what you could be looking at? a gigantic hostage situation. in fact, every american who can t get to the airport right now, harris, think about this. every american who can t get to the airport now is effectively already a hostage of the taliban. they already are because the taliban s unwillingness to facilitate that means they are preventing these americans from their freedom. that s the type of clarity we should be getting from the program. if one american can t cross and one american s hair on their head is harmed you ll pay for it. give them 24 hours. harris: instead none of that was happening to anybody let alone our citizens particularly our citizens.
ability not necessarily the actual count but ability to built out to 25,000 capacity. we aren t there yet. it will take a few days to get to that level and that s the goal right now. the other thing i would say is if the secretary in communication with the chairman and general feels we need to add to that capacity and add to the list additional u.s. military installations we ll do that. right now we are at four. what s the current number of individuals at the four bases? i don t have that. we can take the question and northern command would have a better number than i do. last question. apologize for asking three. it is such an effort to get into the airport and people lucky to get in but now we hear the food supplies, the water