CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward said Friday while reporting from the Kabul airport that despite promises from President Joe Biden of a full evacuation, during a period of eight hours, she did not see any U.S. flights evacuate people.
Ward said, “I’m sitting here, for 12 hours in the airport, eight hours on the airfield, and I haven’t seen a single U.S. plane take off. How on earth are you going to evacuate 50,000 people in the next two weeks. It just, it can’t happen.”
Anchor Kate Bolduan said, “As a sign of maybe what a problem is still before however long this takes is still today, Clarissa, the White House cannot say how many even Americans are still in the country which when the promise and guarantee is from the president to get every American out of the country, and you’ll stay there until you do, it is impossible to know when this mission is going to end if you don’t have a count of how many Americans are in there. I mean, does that make sense?”
Ward said, “Yeah. I mean, here is the thing, Kate, let’s be very clear about this, I’ve now spent more than 12 hours watching this whole process as it plays out. And it is very disorganized. And privately, off the record, these guys will tell you that. It is totally disorganized. The left-hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. It is an enormous operation. There are many different nationals involved.”
She added, “Listening to the talking points that I was hearing from the Pentagon and the White House. I thought this whole thing was moving along swimmingly now. Yet here I am 12 hours later, and I haven’t seen a plane take off in eight hours. I’m watching children coming up to me and saying, please could you get me some food. So, it is clearly not working.”
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