our forces at that airfield. the pentagon is not releasing the names of the people they killed. i m told that the drone went from the united arab emirates to the province. for years a hot bed in afghanistan, nangarhar, and they dropped the moab, the mother of all bombs, in the strikes against bin laden. and that came two days after the deadly attack that killed 13 service members and hundreds of others. and after there was another warning in kabul urging all americans at the gates at the airport to quote, leave immediately. there are reports that many of the gates are welded shut. there are gates closed absolutely right now, as we ve said earlier, we do have gates that continue to be open as we coordinate and still work with the department of state to get people in for evacuation.
he s also the vice ranking member of the house armed services committee, rob whitman. congressman, thank you for taking time. let s get right to it. you are on the armed services committee. what is the latest intelligence you can share with us with what you re hearing about what s happening on the ground in kabul? griff, there are several things, one, there are americans that need to be evacuated. second, is that there is still risk to military members on the ground and we are still facing a deadline that the president refuses to move. i believe the deadline needs to be extended. i don t think that we should be at the mercy of the taliban telling us when to get out. this needs to be about a single purpose and a single purpose only, that is getting every american out of afghanistan. and we should not have a timeline dictate to us by the taliban. the taliban needs to know if this he get in our way of evacuating americans that there will be a swift and deadly response if they do that.
develop. jacqui. jacqui: president biden is moving forward with withdrawing u.s. troops from afghanistan in the next three days after 13 americans were killed in the bombing at the kabul airport. joining us now for analysis is democrat strategist and former from the department of homeland security, and director of the national security law at mason university and for the senate foreign relations committee. thank you for being with us. there s a long ways to go before it s all over, but when it s over there s going to be plenty of time to pick apart specific decisions made carrying out this withdrawalment more bradley speaking for the purpose of the panel discussion, the president maintained it s time to end the war in afghanistan and withdraw and he stands by his decision. is that the right decision, we ve had troops in japan since world war ii and in south korea for 70 years. i ll go to you first.
nearly 120,000 people leaving afghanistan since the taliban took over. people are still leaving kabul, but the numbers are far lower than they were before, following that blast on thursday. it s been very difficult to get people out and get people to the airport. the taliban has increased the perimeter outside of the airport trying to curb the flow of people into the abby gate and the canal area. the august 31st evacuation deadline is quickly approaching. there is an understanding that some civilian flights to kabul could resume after the americans leave, but they would be limited and need to be controlled by a player like turkey, pakistan or qatar. now, once this critical air lifeline is over, there will be an option for people to leave on foot, but it s a major concern to the united nations, who estimates that half a million afghans could try to flee the country on foot in the coming weeks. there s a major humanitarian crisis developing because ngo s and international bodies will sti
talk about the heroic efforts you guys are doing, there is some coordination in terms of when you are manifesting on flights and actually getting your folks to the marines to get through this, it s really an amazing sort of a veteran, private, and military operation, is that correct? yeah, i think that s exactly right. not only this working with the actual service members who are enabling to ensure that they re trying to call into the gates and making sure that there s a checklist on our manifest and again, this manifest is comprised not just americans, but given to us from other departments from the government and other agencies trying to pull out their staff and there s been coordination and some missed steps where we could have gotten more aircraft in and it s been waved off after the necessary waived off because maybe some threat or in some cases, the