administration on february 29th, 2020, where we committed to leave by a date certain. there was a particular provision or condition, if you will, about negative sha shats between the taliban and the afghan government. there was each a date specified, march 10th, 2020, less than two weeks after the signing of the doha agreement. clearly that condition was not met. my question is were there any efforts on behalf of the prior administration to enforce that condition of negotiation with the afghan government and the taliban? senator, as i said in my opening remarks, the conditions that were required of the taliban, none of them were met except one. my question is, did we attempt to enforce those conditions?
0 why wasn t action taken to secure the kabul airport or retake bagram then? thank you, senator. you re right, the tempo had picked up significantly, yet the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie routinely engaged the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troops and further stiffen their defenses, to no avail. to compound that, president ghani continued to make changes in the leadership of the military and this created further problems for the afghan security forces. i don t mean to interrupt you, but my time is lapsing. this gets to the overestimation, i think the overly optimistic assessment, because even as late as july you re still encouraging the afghan special forces, you re expecting the ghani government to remain. in december of 2019, the washington post reported that the u.s. military commanders privately express