Ant Evacuation News Today

Have been able to evacuate several thousand americans. >> very quickly. the last size for an operation from kabul was three weeks ago. >> certainly before kabul fell. this was something that -- i talked about this before. this was something that the pentagon had been thinking about for a long time. as far back as late april when we held a rehearsal of concept exercise looking at the retrograde and parse out through the summer. a part of that conversation was the potential for non-come at ant eva...

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 thats what the president was referring to. >> i have two questions. i would like to go bac...

Midst of drawing down our forces. >> but im asking, im sorry im asking specifically since operations with u.s. forces began at the airport. >> since the noncombat ant evacuation. >> since it began at the airport, are these the first armed over watch over kabul. >> they are not. >> and you say close air support. but to be clear, what you are saying is you are prepared now to conduct air strikes over kabul? >> barbara, i wont talk about potential future operations so i do think it is important to ...

Thirdly, these people are close by. this way if this crisis ends in a relatively short period of time, the u.s. can bring them back. thats why they are not -- this is atypical. they are not moving them outside of a country. they are hoping this is going to be a short term solution for the embassy. >> all right. keep us posted. thank you very much. so what options do the u.s. military have in iraq, if any? joining me now is former hed of the u.s. central command, retired general anthony zini. goo...