this army and this government in 11 days. nonetheless, we planned and enter sielsed a wide range of contingencies. because of that planning we were able to draw down our embassy and move remaining personnel to the airport within 48 hours and the military placed on stand by by president biden secured the airport and started the evacuation within 72 hours. yes, that evacuation was an extraordinary effort under the most difficult conditions imaginable by our diplomats, military and intelligence professionals. they worked around the clock to get american citizens, afghans who helped us. sit since of allies and partners out of the country or to transit locations that our diplomats had worked. we reached out to americans still in country making 5,000 phone calls, sending 33,000
the suicide bombing. more attacks on americans were not just predicted but anticipated. the drone flew over the middle east. officials say american operators on the ground, people congressman green used to work with who were the ones who targeted the strike. it was done on the ground not far away. president biden predicted u.s. forces would be attacked again after 13 officers were killed. president biden: knowing we very well may have another attack the military has concluded that s what we should do. i think they re right. officials say it is notable the threat of the suicide attack went down after the drone strike. officials say this is war. there will be civilian casualties. bill: thank you from the pentagon this morning. wealth we ll follow it. how meticulous was the
the u.s. military and diplomats could do more than they did if only the political bosses got out of the way. now we have americans and sivs and contractors still in afghanistan despite repeated i sure answers you will get them out. you have been unable to do so. planes are stranded in north afghanistan. voice of america employees and students abandoned and siv applicants are in hiding as taliban death squads hunt them down. you said you would have mechanism for evacuation. where is your plan? i haven t seen it. i haven t talked to anyone who has seen it. i have seen a rebuke from european allies. they begged us for help but when we were not helping our own citizens how could we help them? we had to rely on the generosity of partners like qatar. we have all heard and read the united states is no longer a reliable ally. frankly the way this evacuation was conducted i cannot blame
precluded traveling last week. we will continue to help americans and afghans to whom we have a special commitment depart afghanistan if they choose just as we ve done in other countries where we ve evacuated our embassy and hundreds or even thousands of americans remained behind. in libya, syria, venezuela, yemen, somalia. there is no deadline to this effort. third, we re focused on counter terrorism. taliban committed they will not let terrorist groups including al qaeda and isis-k. we ll hold them accountable for that. that does not mean we ll rely on them. we ll maintain a vigilant effort to monitor threats, robust counter terrorism capabilities in the region to neutralize those threats if necessary. and as we do in places around
administration answer so far that you would like to get to the bottom to? right now they say they ve put out about 124,000 individuals that they helped get out. problem is the 124,000, half of them we don t know who they are. there are between 5,000 and 6,000 americans they ve helped out. there is half of the remaining 124,000 that are siv, special immigration visas, but the remaining numbers we don t know who they are and we want to find out who those individuals are and how they were allowed to come out when we have 100,000 more individuals that helped our men and women in uniform over the last 20 years. their lives are at risk. we don t know where they re at and we aren t getting good answers from the department of state as to how we ll help them get out of afghanistan alive. bill: senator, two bits we ll play here. one seems to be a common line