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Isis in afghanistan. joining us now richard stengel, a former top state department official, also phil rucker, senior washington correspondent for the washington post, and co-author of i alone can fix it clint watts, former consultant to the fbi counterterrorism division and now with the foreign policy research institute. all msnbc contributors. but first let s go to nbc pentagon correspondent courtney kube. courtney, you asked general mckenzie about what the u.s. is doing to prem for future attacks. here is what he said. the forces we need to protect ourselves there, i m always in a constant dialogue with the secretary. if i needed anything else, i would be talking to him immediately. i think we have what we need to protect ourselves. let s talk about the threat streams. very real threat streams, very, very what we would call tactical. that means imminent could occur at any moment and they range from rocket attacks. we know they would like to lob a rocket in there if we coul ....
We heard the mission continues and that already they have brought more buses of afghan evacuees in to the airport. they re still letting people through the gates. they re still have several thousand people on the tarmac that they are evacuating. planes are taking off. if you listen to general mckenzie, the most significant thing he said is the threat streams, he described them as very real, tactical, imminent. he said the attackers would like to carry out a rocket attack on planes. in fact, he confirmed that some of the planes taking off in the last week had been shot at, had been fired at. they were not successful. they described the protection measures at the airport. he said the reason the death toll was so high is that the suicide bomber, one suicide bomber got so close to the marines that it was apparently at the gate that the bomb was detonated and these marines were in fact either about to or were in the process of patting down ....
Let s talk about the threat streams. so very, very real threat streams, very, very what we would call tactical. that means imminent, could occur at any moment. they range from rocket attacks. we know they would like to lob a rocket in there if they could. we have pretty good protection against that. we have our anti-rocket and mortar systems, the gun systems that are pretty effective against these kinds of attacks. we have them well positioned around the boundary of the airfield. we also know they d like to get a vehicle attack if they can, from a small vehicle to a large vehicle. we ve already seen a vest wearing suicide attacker. all of those things we look at. now, the other thing we do is, we share versions of this information with the taliban so they can actually do some searching out there for us. ....
Take to him immediately. think we have what we need. let s talk about the threat streams. very real threat streams. what we would call tactical. imminent. they range from rocket attacks. they would like to lob a rocket in there. we have good protection against that. we have our anti-rocket and mortar system, the gun systems that you ve been familiar with. they re effective against these kinds of attacks. we are well-positioned around the boundary and we would be in good shape should that attack occur. we know that they aim to get a suicide vehicle in the they can from a small vehicle to a large vehicle. they re working all those options. we just saw their ability to deliver a walk-in, a vest-wearing suicide attacker. the other thing we do, we share versions of this information with the taliban. so that they can actually do ....
The taliban might have had good reason to keep any attackers at bay. they want the u.s. out of there as fast as possible. the mission, general mckenzie said, will continue. the u.s. plans to be gone by tuesday. i thought that was a remarkable press briefing. general mckenzie was so forthcoming with information in taking the time to explain that face to face contact that u.s. service members have to have with everybody coming through the airport in terms of putting their hands on them and having to screen them. he said we re continuing the mission. isis will not deter us from our mission. we have other active threat streams, though, at this moment. you have spent time at that airport. do you understand what could change, if anything? can they do anything differently now that this horrible tragedy has happened? ....