american citizens from the war zone. why are other nations right now successfully evacuating their own citizens by the hundreds. sandra: one of the major questions as the pentagon readies for a briefing. picture is up, podium is there, we are waiting for the briefing, and take the news off the top. navy seals pulling off an evacuation of the embassy workers and families but hundreds of americans are still there at this hour as the deadly fighting gets closer and closer. john: we will see if the pentagon has a message today for those folks. welcome back as america reports rolls into a second hour. i m john roberts in washington. starting off a new week, sandra. sandra: right on into it, john. a lot of people think of war the moment they hear sudan but bloody battles in the past have never been like this. all right, so you are looking live in sudan, thousands of americans have been left behind and this makes the pentagon briefing that we are waiting any moment now key,
actually on the tanks, 31 of them, 31 training tanks provided to ukrainian personnel to train like they are going to fight. so thank you. thanks, pat. just back on the naval capabilities, can you you said the u.s.s. truckston and i did not catch the second one. u.s.s. puller. and can you say what capabilities they will bring, what types of ships are they and then i ll have a follow-up. yeah, the truckston is an early burke class destroyer. and the idea here is to have these capabilities offshore available should we need, for example, to transport citizens to another location, should we need to provide medical care, those kinds of things. so again, positioning assets to be ready if asked and if needed. and so you know, as we move forward, certainly if we are in position to have to employ that
capabilities ukrainians need to defend their homeland against russian aggression. with that, happy to take your questions. first to reuters. you mentioned naval assets near sudan. how many naval assets and what are the expectation they would do? would they go into port and help assist people coming out, or what s the plan for that, and then a separate follow-up. sure, thanks. right now we have the uss truckston, off the coast of sudan, near port sudan. it will stay there awaiting further orders should it be needed to support. also en route is the u.s.s. polar, so again those capabilities will be there should we should we need too use them in support of state department s efforts. on the evacuation, does the secretary believe that the state department requested evacuation in a timely manner or does he believe that the request was made sooner, potentially more americans could have been moved
the uss truckston. the order was meant to provide the president with additional flexibility, should military options be required to protect american lives, citizens and interests in iraq. that s according to a statement put out by pentagon press secretary rear admiral john kirby. the president has been spending father s day weekend in california but asked his national security team to work all week to understand come up with a range of options to try to help iraq push back this insurgent force. the options do not include u.s. ground troops but they could include air strikes and this ship the bush can be used for air strikes and also use its helicopters to help evacuate americans if needed and also to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance missions. but the president is under growing pressure at home from some members of congress who want him to act quickly to help iraq. senator mitch mcconnell called on the admission saturday to quickly help the iraqi