synchronize with taliban checkpoints. i would say as you look at the last two days that ability with the commanders on the ground to work with the taliban tactical commanders has allowed and i would say the ability to control better the access into that. so you are saying the u.s. troops planned to be on the perimeter outside the airport but that didn t work out? the original 5 thouf 800 force use of the, or the taliban being there. given this arrangement, does
0 require constant coordination and deconfliction with the taliban. it is absolutely requiring us to keep these lines of communication with the taliban open that have checkpoints beyond the airport. we have seen this coordination has worked well in terms of allowing access and flow to continue. one of our commanders used helicopters to bring people in because of the crowd size. crowd size matters, too, and that s what the president was referring to. i have two questions. i would like to go back to the incident. can you be a little more specific and tell us if you can rule out the attackers were the taliban first. i would like to go back to the deadline. the french foreign minister said today that it s quote, necessary to continue the afghanistan evacuation beyond august 31. can t rule out who the hostile actor was in the incident last night. central command s statement referred to it as a hostile actor. we don t know more than that. this just happened. i don t know when we ll have