a complete war zone. that s that s i mean, when you drive there isn t one thing that isn t damaged. that s the thing, it s not like it s a hit or miss. it s like i said, it s a bulldozer that went through the center of town and pretty much took everything with it. in the morning, times s once the light comes up, the damage is going to be a lot more significant than what you re seeing right now. i mean there s the weather, the rain, has calmed down, of course. so, they ve got a lot of the roads cleared out. i mean, everybody around here
the white house conceding they will be scaled back and there s optimism they can eventually get across the finish line. we will see. let s bring in our panel, white house correspondent for reuters, leslie marshall, democratic strategist and former white house secretary ari fleischer. jeff, at the white house they are still holding onto this optimism but it is starting to kind of drag on. the president said it could be six hours or six weeks. definitely leaning towards six weeks at this point. certainly isn t one thing he didn t say six months. they do have a deadline, they do need to get this done this year. he wants some of that money to be injected into the economy by next year and he s going to have a whole new political reality next year with people in congress beginning to run for reelection. so it is absolutely dragging on and though the white house says it is not frustrated, it s hard not to see some frustration there with the fact that one of the main reasons it s dragging
humanitarian aid until there is a clear international position. polly, a lot was talked about hopes of a different type of taliban. we have seen journalists beaten up for trying to report about these peaceful protests, where women have bravely gone onto the streets to say, what about us and our position in society? how realistic is it, though, to attach good governance, make human rights principles central to the taliban receiving help from the international community? yes, goodness, aren t those women astoundingly brave? you look at them with such admiration, but they will be intimidated and sent home. for the time being, we don t really know, and i think the evidence from the reporters on the ground is that the taliban itself isn t one thing. there are those who want to be taliban. more moderate, and there
is a clearer international position. polly, a lot was talked about hopes of a different type of taliban. we ve seen journalists beaten up for trying to report about these peaceful protests, where women have bravely gone onto the streets to say, what about us and our position in society? how realistic is it, though, to attach good governance, make human rights principles central to the taliban receiving help from the international community? yes, goodness, aren t those women astoundingly brave? you look at them with such admiration, but they will be intimidated and sent home. for the time being, we don t really know, and i think the evidence from the reporters on the ground is that the taliban itself isn t one thing. there are those who want to be taliban. more moderate, and there are quite a lot of people who have just been fighters all their life and have very sort of primitive views,
and i think the evidence from the reporters on the ground is that the taliban itself isn t one thing. there are those who want to be taliban. more moderate, and there are quite a lot of people who have just been fighters all their life and have very sort of primitive views, really, about revenge and. ..and a very austere and puritanical kind of government. certainly no women visible. so we don t know. but what really matters at this moment is that we don t let there be a humanitarian catastrophe. if there was a mighty famine now, it would be very hard to heal anything in afghanistan or to, you know, try and help the people there, to whom we do have a strong moral obligation. i think that in britain one of the things we can offer is some of our experience of making peace in northern ireland, where you have