during this process, the views of all of the joint chiefs of staff, all of us, the centcom commander, general mckenzie, general miller, and myself were all given serious consideration by the administration. we provided a broad range of options and our assessment of their potential outcomes. we couched that in cost, benefit, risk-to-force, risk-to-mission. all of that was evaluated against the national security objectives of the united states. on 14 april, the president of the united states, president biden, announced his decision, and the u.s. military received a change of mission, to retrograde all u.s. military forces, maintain a small contingency force of 6 to 700 to protect the embassy in kabul, until the department of state could coordinate contractor security support, and also to assist turkey to maintain the hamid karzai international airport and to transition the u.s. mission to over the horizon