after the package of nearly a month, my pride in their accomplishment remains undiminished. we will never forget those that made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their country. this was a combat operation of the most difficult sort. a noncombatant operation carried out in contact with the enemy. the enemy was isis, a vile, tenacious foe that would have killed many more if it were not for the vigilance of our forces there. on 29 august, we undertook an mq- 9 strike against what we thought was an imminent strike. that strike was a mistake and i take full responsibility for that strike. i was encountered pressure from any quarter to conduct the strike. it was based on our intelligence read of the situation on the ground. in many cases we were right and
0 during this process, the views of all of the joint chiefs of staff, all of us, the centcom commander, general mckenzie, general miller, and myself were all given serious consideration by the administration. we provided a broad range of options and our assessment of their potential outcomes. we couched that in cost, benefit, risk-to-force, risk-to-mission. all of that was evaluated against the national security objectives of the united states. on 14 april, the president of the united states, president biden, announced his decision, and the u.s. military received a change of mission, to retrograde all u.s. military forces, maintain a small contingency force of 6 to 700 to protect the embassy in kabul, until the department of state could coordinate contractor security support, and also to assist turkey to maintain the hamid karzai international airport and to transition the u.s. mission to over the horizon counterterrorism sport and security force systems. it is clear, it is obvious to