takes responsibility. i know all of my colleagues across government feel the same way. i can tell you that there will be plenty of time to look back at the last six or seven months, to look back at the last 20 years and to look to see what we might have done differently. what we might have done sooner what we might have done more effectively. i have to tell you right now my entire focus is on the mission at hand. there s going to be as i said plenty of time to do an accounting of this when we get through that mission. thank you. could you speak today about the future of the u.s. embassy in kabul, whether it was remain or american diplomat it s will remain after the military withdrawal and more broadly, we re seeing women being repressed in afghanistan by the taliban, people being attacked, intimidated, being kept from getting to the airport.
know all of my colleagues across government feel the same way. there will be plenty of time the look back at the last six or seven months. the look back at the last 20 years and to look to see what we might have done differently? what we might have done sooner? what we might have done effectively. i have to tell you right now my entire focus is on the mission at hand and there s going to be plenty of time to do an accounting of this when we get through that mission. could you speak today about the future of the u.s. embassy in kabul whether it will remain or american diplomats will remain in kabul after the military withdrawal in the 31st? we re already seeing women being repressed in afghanistan by the taliban. people being attacked, intimidated, people being kept from getting to the airport. i m wonder ing if you can give
range of projects that they are not ready to leave. i know that s hard for us to understand as we re looking at the images but for many of these afghans this is their home and, yes, they are dual citizens. yes, it is absolutely our responsibility to make sure we are reaching out to them multiple times. we re providing opportunity. we are finding ways to get them to the airport and evacuate them, but it is also their personal decision on whether they want to depart. go ahead. could i just follow up a little bit on some of nancy s questions about the refugees. sure, yeah. first, you talked about the vetting that s going on outside of the united states after they leave iraq not i didn t mean to imply outside well, some of it is happening in qatar but some of it is happening here. it s happening before the people come to the united states. yes, yeah. some of that piece of that vetting is within your control. you can add more people and add
clear, commanders are on the ground to make adjustments when they see fit. that includes changes to the footprints as they confirmed last night of the departure there afghanistan, several hundred u.s. troops. this is head quarter staff, maintenance and others that were scheduled to leave and his mission at the airport was complete. this does not impact the mission at hand. [question inaudible] recently traveled into afghanistan? currently stranded in afghanistan. i don t know for certain i don t have additional information on that. i know as our secretary of state just noted when he went for a thorough summary of american citizens and our contacts and our focus over the last several days that he gave an update and
closes for some period of time. that s happening very actively right now. the taliban made clear they have a strong interest in having a functioning airport. we and the rest of the international community have a strong interest in that. primarily for the purpose of making sure anyone who wants to leave can leave past the 31st using an airport. with regard to our own potential presence going forward after the 31st, we re looking at a number of options. thank you very much. thank you all very much. okay. you ve been listening to secretary of state tony blinken bring us updated numbers which i think we have all been waiting for to know exactly how many americans, roughly, how many americans are still in