Page 36 - August 15th News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Entered kabul. that is what i'm trying to figure out secretary austin, why did we wait? we had to wait for the state department to call for the neo, why did we wait so long to do that, even though prepositioned forces in afghanistan. we had 24th mu there, 82nd airborne coming in, air field was in total chaos on august 15th. >> yeah, i think what changed the equation here, we anticipated based upon disposition of forces that were centered around population center that the afghans would put up more significant resistance and so we anticipated that fighting would be a bit more intense as they app...

Of the collapse of the -- of the afghan government? nobody anticipated it would happen even before our troops were all the way out of the country. it happened on august 15th. even the taliban was surprised, according to press reports, that ghani fled and the -- the afghan army just melted away. so one of the key questions is should the biden administration have anticipated this and be better prepared for it? number one, nobody was predicting it. but number two, we learned today that they were prepared for it. that they had war-gamed the possibility of something like this and that's why they ha...

Tragically, lives were also lost. several afghans killed climbing aboard an aircraft on that first day. 13 brave u.s. service members and dozens of afghan civilians killed in a terrorist attack on the 26th and we took as many as 10 innocent lives in a drone strike on the 29th. evacuations remain the most challenging military operations even in the best of circumstances. in the circumstances in august were anything but ideal. extreme heat, landlocked country, no government, a highly dynamic situation on the ground, and an active, credible, and lethal terrorist threat. in the span of just two da...

Tasked us to provide an assessment on whether or not we should extend our presence beyond august 31st and as general milley just said, that assessment was made. we tasked them to make the assessment on the 25th and came back and provided his best military advice. >> kabul fell on august 15th. it was clear that we had thousands of americans. clear to members of this committee we had thousands of americans in afghanistan behind taliban lines on august 15th and took 10 days to ask the general officers if we should extend our presence? i suspect the answer would be different if you asked them 16 d...

>> the president asked us to provide an assessment on whether or not we should extend our preference beyond august 31st. as general milley just said, that assessment was made. we tasked them to make that assessment on the 25th and he came back and provided his best military advice. >> kabul fell on august 15th. it was clear we had thousands of americans in afghanistan behind taliban lines on august 15th. it took ten days to ask these general officers if we should extend our presence? i suspect the answer may be a little. different if you asked them 16 days out, not five days out. president bid...