afghan military and really the ability of the afghan government to hold on. we know famously that president biden said on july 8th that kabul is unlikely to fall and you re never going to see images of helicopters on the roof of the embassy like you saw at the end of the vietnam war, which of course we saw something very similar. at this time the intelligence is basically showing a picture of an outcome that could be exactly that. as they get through july into august, this was this picture of almost inevitability that the afghan forces were melting away, switching sides, not putting up a fight and there would really just be a route all the way to kabul. mike memoli, jake sullivan was asked about this during the white house press briefing.
further amount of time or investment was going to lead to a situation with an afghan government that is stable and secure. in some ways their argument now is contradicting the argument they were making to the american people a month ago that this is not what the intelligence shows. jake sullivan also pointed to the white house philosophy about this balancing act, which is, all of the confidence the administration showed in the afghan government was not enough to keep it stable. you can understand why the administration was never going to concede publicly we could probably parse the president s answer a month ago and jake s unwillingness to answer the question now as to what the intelligence actually said. you ll never see an intelligence report state anything with 100% confidence. maybe the president was disputing it on those grounds. clearly this has been something the president has been committed to regardless.
what we just saw from sullivan at the podium for more than 45 minutes very much reflecting what the president said yesterday, shows how much of one mind this administration was. this white house is prepared for criticism privately from the pentagon, from the intelligence community. at least at the moment, the white house is not going to engage in this. you heard sullivan say we re one team here. general mccaffrey, i want to get your assessment of what s happening on the ground in afghanistan. jake sullivan said what has unfolded over the past few months proves decisively does that seem accurate to you? jake sullivan sure is
shot, how many shots do we have able for boosters? tomorrow the covid-19 team and our health and medical experts will have a briefing we are going to break away from today s white house press briefing. you see jen psaki there. before that we heard from biden administration national security adviser jake sullivan, who explained and defended president biden s afghanistan withdrawal strategy. it is good to be with you. i m jeff bennett. as we come on the air, the lightning-fast power shift in afghanistan has come full circle. this picture of the man on the left is a cofounder of the taliban. in just the last few hours he handed in kandahar on a flight from qatar, back in afghanistan
that s at least a partial answer to your question. i know you guys have many more questions, but i think probably your patience with me is also wearing a bit thin. so i will leave it at that. [ inaudible question ] i just have a couple of additional updates for you, some of which was provided by the department of defense this morning, but i wanted to make sure you all had this issue as well. the airport, as jake noted, is currently open for military flight operations as well as limited commercial flight operations. throughout the night nine c-17s arrived delivering equipment and a thousand troops. these flights lifted 800 passengers. 165 are american citizens. the rest are a mix of siv applicants and third-country nationals. in addition, the intention is to