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Decisions in our government. the overall assessment of the community was that after a complete us military withdrawal, that could potentially, in the worst case scenario, lead to the taliban capturing kabul within a year or two. so that's back in february, and that was more or less where things stood in the winter and into the spring. by july. .. and you're exactly right that the situation was deteriorating, as the taliban continued to make progress on the ground. the intelligence community did not say that the countrywide collapse of all meaningful resistance would be likely to occur in a mat...

The military told us that in order to do its retrograde, it's draw down from afghanistan in a safe and orderly way it needed three to four months and why we pushed to get to the end of august, early september. second to your point, an important one and good one, our expectation was that beyond august 31st, beyond the military drawdown, the government, security forces would remain in control of kabul, of the major cities, our embassy was fully planned to remain up and running. we were leaving 600 military behind to make sure we could secure the embassy so that it could continue to operate. we h...

Citizens, green card holders, afghans who have -- who are properly documented with a visa, including specifically those that worked in some capacity for the united states. not only do we have that understanding in public statements by the taliban, of course, it's built in to everything we have done with a large coalition of countries in terms of setting an expectation and making very clear that the failure to fulfill that expectation will have significant consequences, which we can get into. secondly, making sure there are ways to travel freely from the country. we made an intensive effort bef...

Offensives on the urban centers? >> yes. >> so if the taliban had begun its siege on these cities and resumed attacks on u.s. troops would 2500 troops have been enough to keep the country from falling to the taliban? >> no. >> would double that number have been enough? do we know how big our force would have had to have gotten >> it was the assessment of our military leaders not to put a number on it but significant additional u.s. forces would have been required to both protect ourselves and to prevent the onslaught from the taliban against the provincial capitals and kabul. >> it wasn't a de...

It's critically important that we listen to all of them who may be talking about exclusively the worst case, some the best case, and some in between. here's what i can say in this setting. we can take this up as well in other settings. back in february, the assessment of the overall assessment of the community was that after a complete u.s. military withdrawal, that could potentially in the worst-case scenario lead to the taliban capturing kabul within a year or two. that's back in february, and that was more or less where things stood in the winter and into the spring. by july, and you are ex...