Page 5 - Functioning Airport News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Vulnerable are little afghan girls. what are you hearing? are afghan girls able to get out? >> no, they are not. people have gotten visas. some people cannot get to the airport. i was asked to look for people in the airport who could facilitate their coming in. that's not happening. we're looking at the borders with pakistan and it's too unsafe to get them all the way there, so i figure the afghan women and girls are going to be left behind and that's something of serious concern to all women's rights groups here. >> what do you hear from people on the ground in afghanistan about what's going ...

Of the embassy, of afghans, it will sap the will of our soldiers to stand up and defend our country. it was massive to believe that eye mass evacuation too early would have led to what we wanted to avoid, which was a major collapse of the government. even if we had begun it early, there still would have been tens of thousands of afghans that the collapse of the government would have rushed the airport. there still would have been the scenes we're seeing today with all the incumbent security threats that are attached to it. in retrospect, obviously the government and the security forces of afgh...

>> peter, the focus right now is to get the remaining americans out of the country, the afghan partners out of the country, and as i said in response to phil's question, this is not a preferred relationship, or a situation that we would have designed if we had started from scratch. that is very clear. but right now, we need to continue to coordinate and that is the focus for the next couple of days. >> the last one, you said that we will have a great deal of leverage over the taliban after we leave, and you think that we will have more leverage with no troops on the ground than we do with thou...

As other countries are coming in, they are evacuating certain numbers of where they are in their capability or requirement. so i have thif -- think that's where you have seen some of the differences in the outwar flow. you have to go back to 110,000 total. so as we started just under almost just a few weeks ago at zero to up 110,000 we would see some of those numbers start to come down. >> let me go back to the phones. sam. >> john, as part of the exit, is it the u.s. intention to leave a functioning airport with radars that work, computers that work? what's the obligation for what you all lea...

Will we try to bring the known terrorists to justice before we leave the country? >> peter, the focus is on getting the remaining american citizens who want to depart out of the country. as i said in response to phil's question this is not a preferred relationship or a situation that we would have designed if we had started from scratch. i think that's very clear but right now we need to coordinate. that's the focus for a couple days. >> you said we think we'll have a great deal of leverage of the taliban after we leave. you think we'll have more leverage with no troops on the ground in afghan...