incredibly thankful for the marines, the people that put their lives on the line every single day and the famiies that are sacrificing. a lot of families are waking up this morning so incredibly sad to know someone has been lost, to know our hearts are with them. with that, i want to dig in to what you were talking about congressman and the withdrawal process, the evacuation of more americans and afghans that thank put their lives on the line for americans as well. we heard from representative smith speaking to chris jansing. no matter what when troop withdrawal is complete the evacuations will continue. what would that look like? it will not look like what we re seeing right now and instead we have to rely on special forces, we have to rely on other organizations like the cia to basically track down and surgically remove these evacuees
those were killed in this attack. this, again, the worst possible news. the press secretary saying the thoughts and prayers of not only him but the pentagon are with the family members of those loved ones. to put this in perspective, a u.s. service member hasn t been killed in afghanistan since february of 2020. shortly before the signing of the agreement that essentially started the wheels rolling in this entire withdrawal process. we re now down to the last 100 hours of what was supposed to be the u.s. military presence in afghanistan. the withdrawal that former donald trump started. that president joe biden was finishing here right at the end of the month. and, of course, this horrible news as the press secretary said a short time ago in a statement, a number of u.s. service members killed. there were marines and soldiers who were part of the security that guarded the perimeter of the airfield and working as part of the evacuation. we saw the images of them helping the families that
measure, this coming from the taliban. but at this point in this moment, if that s what they re laying out, what should the u.s. reaction be to it? again, i think on the withdrawal process, we should say we re going to leave when the last person is out. not that he wants to get into a shooting war again, but they ve been on the receiving end of 20 years of american military power and they lost every battle. where they finally defeated the kbrats wasn t in battle, but was in our will. 20 years is too long, even though it took the united states many, many decades, if not sentries to get our act together. what you re seeing with the taliban is not a protecting measure. this is what the taliban are. they try this temporary charm of it. we re seeing the reality of it. women are going to be brutalized under this regime. we were in a classified briefing yesterday. i ve seen the ones we just saw
and they want it to stop and clearly are coordinating with the americans. yesterday that surprise visit of the cia meeting with baradar who signed the deal, in fact with secretary of state pompeo to start this withdrawal process. he is now the senior most taliban political leader here. so a lot of efforts under way to get this moving and everyone is watching to see if president biden will extend the deadline now that the taliban has made it clear it doesn t want it to be extended and is pushing hard to speed up the process so it doesn t have to be extended. but speeding up the process is from everything that we re being told for the american citizens priority and for the afghan allies, the sivs or american permanent residents who are not citizens and as many sivs as they can get out.
this drawdown. we shouldn t read too ch into that. these are essentially nonessential staff, so to speak. they are being moved out so that the maximum number of evacuees can be got out over the next 36 or 48 hours before the u.s. has to start its own withdrawal process in earnest. and that will be a very fraught and very, very high-intensity process during which they are at their most vulnerable from attack, particularly from the isis-k group. jake? and, sam, the pace of evacuations, as you noted, it s picked up significantly. the pentagon says that the planes leaving kabul roughly every 45 minutes. the evacuations included more than 45,000 americans and passport holders. with so many flights going off and hopefully the congestion and crowds therefore alleviated a