country. at the same time i m wondering about the political fallout for this. the fact that the military contradicted what was told to the president on august 18th. they did not tell you no? we should keep 2500 troops? it s been stable and we can do that and continue to do that? no, no one said that to me that i can recall. so, general mccaffery, his stock and trade was that you can trust him, he won t lie to you, and guys with four stars on their shoulders saying, you know, we today him. we advised him. he listened, he knew what we were advising, but he is the commander in chief. yeah, well, i understand i
courtney kube, thank you so much. and thank you general mccaffery. joining us now is bob woodward who has a new book out. his latest book kors two administrations. it looks at donald trump s chaotic last year in office, the debate in the white house, and it is coauthored with robert costa. congratulations, it is the hottest book in town. as smp that knows the military so well, what is your reaction to the general s publicly contradicting the president?
international assistance and maybe they are concerned about the potential of civil conflict in the role that the united states may or may not play. so there is an effort on america s behalf where the taliban could facilitate or enable these evacuation, and that window, too, is closing, because the taliban has consistently said that august 31st is the date at which they expect to see the united states out of afghanistan entirely. yeah. general mccaffery, shifting the attention back to today s attack. the warnings that americans were give even if you are in the entryways, you need to get out, and how could they have been so accurate but not precise enough to stop it, is that intelligence or operations issue having to do with the military footprint having to do around the airport?
the acceptable level of chaos, and the understandable level of chaos, which is the rapid collapse of the afghan government now, and the unacceptable loss of american life, but it is one that officials had been warning about increasingly of the last two days and providing updates of the accelerating pace of evacuating they were quietly racing the alarm, and concern of the possibility of the terrorist threat that remained on the ground, and clearly those intelligent reports very concerned about were reallied. but they are stressing no formal attribution has been made yet. let s bring in general barry mccaffery. as you know, the last daysf battle are the most dangerous. i want to lean into your experience. give us a sense of the experience and advice that the president is getting? we know about the prepared
facing an arduous journey to tajikistan or pakistan, and the decision at the white house is how many people to get out before the window closes of having a presence on the ground, and having an evacuation mechanism in place. i think that already from talking to people in afghanistan, and talking to the people trying to get out, they had shifted from letting the people in the gates to having the convoys coming into the airport. so that is the only way of getting the people out, and the people that you literally are bringing in to what is a much more fortified airport than it is. but as general mccaffery said, that we don t have the resources that we need. so from the administration, it is a question of what do we know about the further threats, and action to mitigate the threats, and more people to evacuate before the focus is going to shift to getting out the americans who are there as part of the evacuation effort.