0 tonight before dumping rain in tennessee and ohio river valleys tomorrow. there's flash flooding and mudslides along the way. we wish those people well and a quick recovery in a very difficult situation. thanks nor being with us today for "the story," august 30, 2021. the "the story" continues tomorrow. see you back here. >> neil: thank you, martha, very much. we're on top of two storms gripping the world right now. certainly our part with the flooding and damage and winds and still more flooding and damage and winds to come from hurricane ida, now tropical storm ida. also following what's going on in afghanistan with less than 24 hours to go before we go and are gone. where does that stand right now? welcome. i'm neil cavuto. this is "your world" on a day of dramatic developments on the mother nature storm and the storm brewing in afghanistan as we get ready to call it a day in less than a day after better than 20 years in that country. let's get the latest from lucas tomlinson at the pentagon with how afghanistan and these final hours might look. sir? >> neil, it's 12:30 a.m. in afghanistan august 31. that is the deadline for u.s. forces to leave afghanistan. the last plane will leave in the next few hours. wore waiting for that word here at the pentagon. could be more than that. all eyes are on the light flight. this comes as u.s. forces have come under attack in recent days. five rockets fired at u.s. forces. we heard from jennifer griffin's questioning earlier to john kirby that one of the rockets came through, the counter rocket artillery and mortar system did not shoot down all the rockets. didn't cause any damage to personnel or aircraft. sunday a second u.s. reaper drone from the base in the uae launched another mission to destroy a suicide bomber, two in a vehicle a van headed for the gate. it was destroyed two miles from the front gate of the kabul airport where u.s. forces remain. friday night the first drone strike, the first time the biden administration had ordered a strike following that deadly suicide attack that killed 13 service members that drone killing two isis planners. it was notable today the pentagon is still refusing to name the two isis fighters killed friday night. they're called planners. normally that is considered for lower level fighters, neil. >> neil: thanks, lucas, at the pentagon. today we're getting word that in the last 24-hour period, 6,000 individuals were evacuated from kabul. you might be noticing a pattern that each day it's a smaller figure. we're told anywhere from 1300 to 1800 were on the tarmac supposedly waiting to depart. those figures we won't have till tomorrow. tomorrow at this time, it will all be over unless something is miraculously extended and that doesn't appear to be possible at this point. trey yingst following this from doha, qatar. trey? >> the last group of people making their way out of afghanistan the past 24 hours. an estimated 80,000 afghanistans are in the country unable to flee. they join a small handful of americans. officials estimate less than 250 that were not able to be evacuated. a senior state department official does believe that they have contact with the necessary americans who want to leave but were not able to make to it the airport. there were some disturbing reports over the weekend of african american university students being turned away from the airport. "the new york times" said a group of students gathered at a safe house and took buses to the airport. they were informed that they wouldn't fly out. one students said "i regret to inform you that the high command has announced there's no more rescue flights." we've seen an uptake of people leaving on foot. pakistan and iran have taken thousands of refugees. fox learned of a story of a former translatener the u.s. army taking a bus through taliban checkpoints. in the coming hours, we likely will get confirmation from the u.s. government that the war is over in afghanistan. today it is august 31 in kabul and it means that according to the u.s. estimates, they will be wrapping up, heading home and that will be said and done. neil? >> neil: just incredible, trey. thanks very much. the white house is saying that 6,000 americans have been evacuated from afghanistan. i assume that is since the taliban took over. so doing the rough math, of the 115,000 that have been airlifted, 6,000 were americans and the rest presumably afghan nash names or friends of the united states. i'm sure they will update us on the figures. i apologize for the confusion. let's go to lieutenant general keith kellogg. very good to have you on a busy news day. it looks like when all is said and done, of the 115,000 plus evacuated, 6,000 were americans and the rest afghan nationals. what do you think of those numbers? >> yeah, neil, thanks for having me on. the numbers are great. getting that amount of people out of afghanistan is super. but what are we leaving behind? i think we're congratulating ourselves for getting a certain number out and yet it's an unforced error that we're doing what we're doing right now. nobody can really tell me or you or your listeners out there how many are actually left behind and what conditions is it going to be left in. i congratulate the tactical units on the ground for getting the people out of there i know they're collapsing the air head, meaning getting ready to get out of there. this is almost surreal. this -- after 20 years and i was in the pentagon on 9-11 and watching this going, it's so much to unpack right now. so did we get people out? yeah. congratulations to getting them out. who did we leave behind and why did we do that? >> neil: yeah, we won't know at any time soon to your point. i wanted to pick your brain on this "washington post" story gaining traction and back and forth. that is that the u.s.a. greed to let the taliban control kabul right before its taking. what do you make of that? >> yeah, neil, to me that is an unforced error. first of all, even that we're talking to the taliban about this. makes sense to me in the sense that the political adviser of the taliban knew he couldn't control kabul. he probably would turn to the americans or the way the report goes from "the washington post." let's make the assumption that it's true and said okay, can you control kabul? they probably went to the president of the united states and said no, i don't want to do it. it would have involved more troops on the ground to expand the perimeter. if your goal is to get every american out of there and all of your allies out, why not change the date that you made. nobody else made it. say we're going to get our people out. seems to be we could have negotiated that and worked at it. instead what they said is no, 31 august is a hard date. we're going to get out. if we leave people behind, wee leave people behind. this could be a truly unforced error where we had the opportunity to expand the perimeter, put more troops in there until we got the people out and collapsed the perimeter and go out. it's almost like -- i hope we unpack this story more and more. it doesn't make sense to me. i don't know if it does to you. neil, doesn't make sense to me at all. >> you're the expert, general. even in my naive look at the region, if we had gotten that ability to secure kabul, that would have meant that there's no taliban perimeter around the airport or anything that we saw that was compromised by these isis k bombings. it's easy to monday morning quarterback this if it was that way, but it is just part of a series of fateful decisions that brought us to where we are now. doesn't look like we'll extend the deadline beyond of the roughly at this time. what do you think of that? >> well, i know they're out of there. what they're doing militarily, they're actually collapsing the perimeter right now, the air head. general donahue is the guy in charge of that. he knows how to do that. you slowly reduce the size:0 the air head and get out in the middle of the night. you're out of there and you're gone. tomorrow morning when the sun arises in afghanistan, the united states military won't be there. that air field will go back to control of the commercial activities that are currently there. that is what they're doing right now. that's militarily makes sense to me. i mean tomorrow morning when the sun arises in afghanistan, i think everybody in america will take a deep breath and go wow, 20 years and this is how we leave after 9-11? it was disorderly to get out of there. a lot of unforced errors. i think there's a really bad after taste in this whole thing, neil, going forward. >> neil: i just wonder as well, general, just to pick your brain on what will be afghanistan after we leave? we have the taliban. dealing with this isis-k element. i don't know what the intelligence is on that. it will be a mess, it's safe to say. i'm wondering how you see this sorting out if it does sort out? >> i don't think it's going to go well. the taliban are not a governing body and you and i would understand the govern body. they're not democrats there in afghanistan. it's not a nation in conflict. the russians went in and they found out about it. it's an ungoverned territory going forward. the problem is it's going to have the capability and capacity to have a first rate military because what we left for them. we left blackhawks, more than australia has, all of those weapon systems out there. you have a government that is not a government. it's basically a terrorist organization that hold as lot of land. who know what's the future will bring. i'll tell you, it's going to be like the badlands in the american west in the old days. a lot of really bad people in that country and we have no idea what will come out of it. i don't think any of it will be good. i just don't. >> neil: thanks, general. general keith kellogg, the former national security adviser to mike pence. we're continuing to look at what's going on in afghanistan. and now to hurricane ida, now tropical storm ida. she's walloped the new orleans region and mississippi and points north now that could see heavy winds and flooding. mike tobin with more. >> neil, the damage around new orleans is a lot of what you would expect. wind damage. behind me a roof that was pulled off. a lot of trees knocked over, light posts knocked down. the boy hood host of louis armstrong collapsed during the storm. it's not like the aftermath of katrina. that is because after the $14 billion rebuild, the levee system was subject to its fir major test. according to governor edwards, it passed. >> it would be a different story altogether had any of those levee systems failed. having said that, the damage is still catastrophic. but it was primarily wind driven. we know that there were some areas that received tremendous rainfall as well. we're going to be dealing with this damage for quite a while. >> it's a different story outside of the protection of the levee system. in lafitte system, the levee was overtopped. north louisiana, some people were trapped on their rooftops. >> we got trees down, lines down. lucky i made it here. this is very bad. >> now, the big impact is power. more than two million people are without power now. that means everyone in no, sir lines and significant portions of the population across the state. neil? >> neil: thanks, mike, very, very much. mike tobin following those developments. back to what is happening with all of these refugees coming from afghanistan. we broke it down for you. roughly 115,000 have been airlifted out of the country. the fact of the matter is 6,000 of those were americans. so the overwhelming majority of these afghan nationals that have to find a home and make a home. what is the vetting process like? greg palkot has more from germany. greg? >> neil, yeah, basically we're in the final hours of the u.s. war in afghanistan. there's a lot of lives hanging in the balance. take a look at what we saw today at a major u.s. military hub not far from where we are right now. >> right now there's a double focus for the u.s. military getting all troops and gear out of kabul by the tuesday deadline and of course getting as many afghans out of harms way as soon as possible. ram stein air force base in germany is a busy place. >> neil, there's 18,000 afghans now at that base. they are being vetted. they are being checked, housed and fed. the flow of incoming refugees from kabul, slowing down. only one plane in the last 36 hours. flights out to the states ramping up. 12 planes with 2,000 on board. there's still thousands that could be targeted by the taliban. hear what some refugees told us through a security fence and hear what the commanding general said. >> you know, the taliban and isis, they're enemies. they never change. >> family is still there. >> you worry about them? >> i do. >> what about the future under the taliban? >> the future is -- i don't think the future is good. >> you wish you had more time? >> always. always. more time and more sleep. >> you're doing what you can? >> we're doing everything we can. going back to the humanity and providing hope. >> the humanity and providing hope, neil. the general said this base would be playing a role in the military evacuation as well but in fact they're busy with the humanitarian mission. we're about two miles from the base. we've been hearing planes go over our heads the past couple hours, a lot of stuff going forward. again, a lot of people remain behind. back to you. >> neil: greg palkot, thanks for that. as greg touched on, a lot of these afghans are going to be housed at air force bases all around the country, certainly in the united states. a good many of them at fort bless in texas. the former commanding general of the fort bliss facility is with us right now, co-author of "hunting the caliphate." general, thanks for being here. >> good afternoon, neil. good to be here. >> neil: how will it do in your mind at fort bliss and how will the process go? the continued weeding out of potential problems? generally hope by the time they arrive, all of that has been screened. maybe you can explain what we're in for. >> the afghan refugees will be taken to several bases. texas, virginia, wisconsin, even new jersey. for fort bliss, it's the largest post by area in the united states army. between fort bliss and the adjoining base, wide sands missile rage, 25% of the u.s. army's total land. so there are places at fort bliss that are remote where the refugees can be secured. places like mcgregor range. so the screening probably will not be that difficult because it a way from a major population area like el paso. >> neil: got it. general, much has been made of the fact that in the rush to get people out, maybe we didn't do our due diligence. there's some cases where paperwork was not in order or no paperwork at all. too late to quibble over that now. i'm wondering in light of all of this whether you fear some nefarious characters might have slipped through? >> i'm sure there's always that possibility. i think that's the beauty of taking to a place like fort bliss. it's 1.2 million acres of land. so there's remote areas where more detailed screening can probably take place. biometrics and everything else to keep american citizens safe and to make sure the afghan refugees are safe and can safely move in to society by going through the remote areas. >> so general, you know, as a former commander in iraq, you've heard these "washington post" stories that report in the early days, a little more than a few weeks ago, the u.s. had agreed to let the taliban take control and essentially run kabul. what do you make of that? what do you think that has created since? >> well, again, if true,'s got a lot of confidence there general mckenzie, the commander of centcom. i know him. trying to secure a city of kabul as large as it is would be extremely difficult if you do not have the troops to do it. apparently he chose to secure the kabul airport, which is more within the constraints that he was given as far as troops. so maybe that's a possibility. the initial planning as discussed before i think was very poor. when the withdrawal and abandonment of afghanistan took place. with the evacuation with 114,000 citizens, afghan and americans being taken out was done well once that took place. the initial planning was terrible. >> so the 6,000 troops that ultimately were targeted to be there for this ultimate withdrawal from the country and help people evacuate, that would have been way too small to take control and include in your operations. how many troops should we have had the that were the call? >> it's hard to estimate. kabul, millions of people. it would have taken that division level force of 20,000 to 30,000 to secure all of kabul. general mckenzie choose the smaller foot printed of what he thought he could control. >> neil: you know, general, someone who has written extensively on hunting the caliphate and now trying to make sense of what afghanistan looked like in light of warring terrorist groups like the new isisk and the taliban and from the new afghanistan from whatever evolves, is it a threat to us? is what is happening there a potential physical threat to us? >> the new afghanistan is taliban-run. so potentially it is a threat. time will tell. if the taliban allow al-quaida, isis-k and other terrorist groups to exist and to operate within afghanistan, that is a problem with that is a problem that we'll have to deal with. >> neil: general, the administration and others have criticized for not being able to fathom the rapid fall of the afghan government. the wrap is by not appreciating it, we were caught off guard and now running out of town in the next 23 hours. you agree that people should have been more aware of that potential especially as the taliban were accelerating its run and taking over the country at a pretty swift pace as this discussion was going back and forth? >> i'm just not sure how anybody could really predicted how quickly the afghan security forces hand the afghan government would have fallen. we've had examples in parallels. remember in iraq in 2011 when president obama moved all troops out of iraq. within three years, isis was able to fester and form in iraq and syria. so in 2014 when isis attacked iraq and took over a third of iraq's territory and the city of mosul, over a million people, five iraqi divisions were defeated and the security forces were melty. people thought is superior would take bag dat and the iraq security forcele would be infective and the government could fall. a different path was chosen with a small u.s. footprint of soldiers, which was very honored to lead and a different pathway. instead of evacuating the embassy, we fought isis. i wonder as we look at the current situation in fafg it had been thought through by the administration that bout the backbone of u.s. forces, how long did we think the afghanistan security forces would last? unless we knew that they could handle the fight. i wish it was thought through much more. i wish there hadn't been a treaty or not treaty, an agreement made by the previous administration with the taliban to get us in this place in the first place. however, president biden is the president. he could have chose different lip and could have had a vision of what the region should look like. i not sure that vision is what we're seeing now a taliban run-afghanistan. >> neil: so your argument, general, to be clear a presence, even a small presence, 2500,2600 troops would have been enough to avoided what we saw happen? >> i think so. a small footprint, 2,500, maybe 3,500. basically enablers. they were help to conduct air strikes. they helped secure the massive air field at bagram air base. they did intelligence. they were a good platform against other terrorist groups in the region. now what we find ourselves is in a position with a tal