cabinet. taliban hadn t been letting americans get to the airport in kabul or leave the airport in masri shareef but now with one flight in the air the white house has praise for the taliban quote they have shown flexibility and they have within business-like and professional in our dealings with them in this effort. this is a positive first step. they you are saying taliban business like and professional the interior minister has a 10-million-dollar pointy on his head. we are here to celebrate the return of american citizens to wanted to leave afghanistan of legal permanent residents of afghan to why our side to qatar successful airlines flight. with that a tip of the cap to the taliban unlike the very harsh rhetoric used by the president this evening to describe americans who have not been vaccinated. he spoke more than 20 minutes, did not take any questions, did not mention afghanistan. bret?
and the taliban hadn t met those and so wouldn t have gone through. so for the president of this administration, president biden saying he s doing, on what happened with the previous administration, it doesn t hold water. he could have and i think back to world war ii. we re still in germany. we re still in japan, and in the korean war, we re still in korea and all three places have had enduring peace since and having a small presence there, which i think this president was advised to keep, he adamantly refused and instead a precipitous withdrawal and now a mess on our hands. and being in homeland security and head of homeland securities or the republicans is a tremendous task sure we have the never oversight to keep the country safe. no question, that the commissioner of the new york city police and head in the past said as recently as yesterday that everyone s
i heard the 4500 number the ambassador spoke to. when the real discussions earlier this year were taking place on maintaining troop presence or complete withdrawal, the number i kept hearing was 2500. they could maintain with a relatively small footprint, shore up the afghan government and support the military in a way that prevents taliban from full scale takeover. the people that were against that argued there was already agreement in place with the taliban in february of 2020 that the u.s., there would be full withdrawal. the reason the taliban hadn t been attacking americans and nato allies in the year plus since the agreement was because of agreement they were adhering to one piece of it, wanted the u.s. to get out. if the u.s. decided to stay, the taliban would start attacking. we don t know. nobody knows what the taliban would have done had the u.s. decided to stay. across the board, i heard
white house press secretary jay carney. listen to what congressman darrell issa had to say about him on cnn s state of the union. their paid liar, their spokesperson, picture behind, he s still making up things about what happens and calling this local rogue. president obama s unofficial adviser david plouffe tweeted this in response. strong words from mr. grand theft auto suspected arsonist insurance swindler and loose ethically today, referring to allegations issa faced decades ago. jay carney says he s staying out of it. darrell issa over the weekend called you a paid liar for the administration. i wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to that. i hadn t heard that. that s amazing. i m not going to get into a back-and-forth with chairman issa. let s get a little back-and-forth here going on
other stories we are monitoring in the situation room. ten children killed in a blast. they blame taliban militants for the attack, though the taliban hadn t claimed responsibility. separately, a police officer was killed and 16 others wounded in a suicide blast in eastern afghanistan. ford is recalling 365,000 cars due to a fuel leak that poses a fire risk. it includes the 2013 explorer, taurus, flex, fusion, inter accept tore and lincoln models. they re not aware of incidents or fire related injuries related to the defect but received hundreds of complaints from customers. president obama kicked off the national white house conference on mental health, emphasizing he hopes that will elevate the national conversation on the subject and bring it out of the shadows. you see commercials on tv