years peace agreement, and whether a leopard really can change its spots. hello, afghanistan s ousted president ashraf ghani has issued a video message from the united arab emirate, where he is in exile. he is promising to return to his homeland to fight for sovereignty. in a nine minute broadcast mr ghani said he had been forced to leave afghanistan at the weekend to avoid bloodshed and that claims he made off with $169 million were baseless. (biv inside afghanistan the work continues to evacuate afghan allies most at risk, though it proving increasingly difficult to get people who are eligibile to leave to the airport. the german foreign ministry confirmed today that their first evacuation flight left with just seven people on board it. the taliban have surrounded the airport, and although they are promising safe passage few are prepared to take the risk. as our chief international correspondent lyse doucet reports. come and help, help, help. a girl at the gate screaming
a new fire explodes east of the california capital and triples in size in a single day. welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. we start with breaking news in our world lead. moments ago we heard from the u.s. secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff for the first time since afghanistan fell to the taliban. general mark milley pledging to get all americans and afghan allies safely out of that country and defending the intelligence behind the troop withdrawal, saying absolutely nothing indicated to the pentagon that the afghan government and army would collapse in only 11 days. the situation on the ground getting increasingly harrowing for the thousands of americans and afghans trying to reach the kabul airport to escape. [ gunshots sounding ] that s the sound of the taliban firing purportedly to disperse crowds outside the airport. desperate afghans had been telling cnn that even after presenting correct paperwork, taliban fighters are not allowi
you can bet the issue of what is happening at kabul and the airport and the bedlam in and around there going on and on and disrupting thousands from even getting out of the country will come up. ahead of that, to jennifer griffin at the pentagon on where this stands right now. jennifer? neil, a somber briefing with very few answers. a defensive posture from the defense secretary and chairman of the joint chiefs that said now is not the time for after action reports or discussion of regrets. the picture that they painted was bleak and dependent on the taliban. the bottom line is afghans and americans can not get to the airport due to taliban checkpoints. u.s. military planes are leaving halfful due to bureaucratic bottle necks. people told that their paperwork is not in order around turned away. the defense secretary said there were limit tos the u.s. forces on the ground and offered this frank admission. we don t have the capability to collect large numbers of people. t
mark milley saying today that getting americans out is the singular focus of the biden administration. the situation is still very dangerous, very dynamic and fluid and we can be proud of those executing this mission. they re currently in harm s way. that needs to be our focus. there will be plenty of time to do aars but right now our mission is to secure that air field, defend that air field and evacuate those faithful to us. there will be many postmortems on this topic but right now is not that time. there s troops at risk and we the united states military and fully intend to successfully evacuate all american citizens who want to get out of afghanistan, all american citizens who want to get out of afghanistan. they are our priority number one. in addition we intend to evacuate those supporting us for years and won t leave them behind. milley s comments hours after scenes of chaos unfolded on wednesday outside of what is the only way out of afghanistan. the airport in k
i m erin burnett. the breaking news, i quote the buck stops with me end quote. those are the words of president biden admitting the fall of afghanistan happened, well not at all as he expected, yet, he says there is plenty of blame to go around. afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. the afghan military collapsed. sometimes without trying to fight. americans cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. when i hosted president ghani in the white house in june and spoke to him by phone in july, we had very frank conversations. we talked about how afghanistan should prepare to fight and clean up the corruption in government so the government could function for the afghan people. we talked extensively about the need for afghan leaders to unite politically. they failed to do any of that. i also urged them to engage in diplomacy, to seek a political settlement with the taliban. this