0 admiral and the general aren t working in in a very personal way with taliban authorities outside the airport. let me go another one on the phone. tara. thank you for doing this, john. yesterday the president mentioned also that he was calling upon the department to create contingency plans in case the number of americans and afghans haven t gotten out by the 31st. can you just explain kind of what the department is thinking about what its options might be to continue to get americans out after the 31st if they haven t made it to the airport by then? and then just to follow on jeff s question with afghans that aren t getting through, for those have discussions gone on with the taliban to maybe find some negotiation space for they ve said no more afghans can clear but there are 10,000 at the airport. something is happening behind the scenes helping some people get through. can you talk about that to some extent? i ll start with the last question first. kind of comes off of some
underground railroad, which is about getting interpreters and others out of iraq. he joins me now to talk about this and not for the first time. good to see you, colonel. the president said the process is already under way, but in your view, is that true in a meaningful sense, in the sense of actually getting people out in the numbers that need to get out? this needs to be a mass operation and right now, doesn t it? absolutely, michael. and let me just start by saying that nobody in our coalition that i represent, veterans groups, humanitarian groups, we re not questioning the decision to withdraw. but we are saying, let us do it with dignity. let us get all of our afghan interpreters out. so i imagine the president s comments were in reference to what he cited as 2,500 siv applicant who s have applied since january. and, yes, that is marginal improvement in the siv