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The pros and cons and the costs and risks. and yet, in august of this year, president biden told george stepnopoulos in an interview, no, no one said that, referring to keeping some 2,500 troops in afghanistan. was that an inaccurate statement by the president? >> sir, i'm not going to comment on a statement by the president? >> okay. general mckenzie, in mid-june, your commanders on the ground were informing you that things were deteriorating. at that time, you thought you should proceed with the retrograde. what did you decide at that time? >> we decided to proceed with the retrograde. >> ok...

0 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 retrog...

>> sir, i was present when that discussion occurred. >> mm-hmm. >> and i'm confident that the president heard all of the recommendations and listened to them very thoughtfully. >> so one of the recommendations that was made by the three of you would be the recommendation that was originally made my general miller's two weeks ago. >> during the august 18th interview on abc, george stepnopoulos asked president biden whether u.s. troops would stay beyond august 31st if there were still americans to evacuate. president biden responded, and this is a quote, if there's american citizens left, we're ...

0 there's no doubt in my mind that our efforts prevented an attack on the homeland from afghanistan, which was our core original mission. and everyone who has served in that war has been proud. your service mattered. beginning in 2011, we steadily drew down our troop numbers, consolidated and closed bases and retrograded equipment from afghanistan. at the peak in 2011, we had 97,000 u.s. troops alongside 41,000 nato troops in afghanistan. ten years later, when ambassador calisade signed the agreement on 29, february, 2020, the united states had 12,600 u.s. troops with 8,000 nato and 10,500 con...