international partner or international another country. but that has yet to come to fruition and that is a major question here, john. it s unclear whether there will be flight operations at all after august 31st, at least for a period of time and then there are questions about whether or not people will be allowed across land borders and how risky it is for them to get there. these are the considerations being made as the u.s. draws its troop level down to 0 over the next few people. kylie atwood, 12,500 people taken out the last 24 hours. thank you for the latest news. this morning, huge crowds again gathered outside the kabul airport, even with the terror attack there. we re going to talk about the security threat that exists at this moment next.
yeah, maria, i think this illustrates very well joe biden s incompetence in handling the withdrawal. we announced the withdrawal in the spring. we had 2500 troops in afghanistan. we now have 7,000 troops in afghanistan, maria, to try to get americans out. so we have almost 3 times as many troops in afghanistan to get out of afghanistan as we had when joe biden announced we were getting out of afghanistan. nothing can probably better indicate the incompetence of joe biden of executing the withdrawal and then when you talk about bagram air base, the chairman of the joint chiefs made it pretty clear the other day that the military was given a maximum troop level that they can have in afghanistan starting july 1 and to control both the embassy and the airport as well as bagram required more troops and they were not allowed to have the troops there. they had to shut down bagram. why would they shot down bagram? massive air base where we have ability to sustain thousands of troops and afgh
that will argue we shouldn t be there. we shouldn t be fighting if foreign wars. we have no business being there. was there a way to remove u.s. troops or remove our presence or downgrade our presence there without setting off his generals? i don t really think so. we are already at 2000 troops in syria, right? it is downgrading that troop level anymore. so i think it is hard to talk about for so many reasons. it is a humanitarian disaster. there has been very little reprieve. so any which way i think we move will cause some conversation. i think a total troop withdraw is something that maybe we are not drad fready for at this poi. the generals we talked to, the troops on the ground that were briefed on the ground they are sitting there, you know, in their operating base saying your
deploying, quote, anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel to the u.s./mexico border. already more than 5,000 service members have been deployed with the state admission of preventing entry to any migrants traveling with the caravan or any undocumented immigrants. the caravan still hundreds of miles from the closest crossing point to the u.s. the president stoking fear on twitter this morning, writing, quote, we will not let this caravan into the u.s. our border is sacred, must come in legally. turn around. joining me now is retired four-star general stanley mccrystal, who commanded all forces in afghanistan, among many other tasks. he s out with a new book called leaders: myth and reality. it s an honor to have you here. thanks for having me. you haeard the president saying 15,000 troops may be sent to the border. already he s talking about a troop level there or service member level there that could exceed the number of troops we have fighting isis in iraq and
and a white house official told us last night that there is a number that they have in mind, they are mulling over a troop level here. but that that number hasn t been announced yet. so if there is something to be announced, it is very likely to be that or something along those lines. ver of course the president trying to do mexico and congress to do more. and we ll look at all of that. abby phillip, thank you. and obviously a lot to get to this morning. here to discuss it with us, our contributors. and i want to start with the border. we may get more specifics today which would be helpful. but as we look at this, is this the president pulling at straws in order to check off a campaign promise? well, it is always hard to understand what his motivation is. there has been this storyaeen p