greater threat from east africa. there's a significant greater threat to other places in the world than it is from the mountains of afghanistan. and we have maintained the ability to have an over the horizon capability to take them out. we don't have military in syria to make sure that --

going to stay then we better -- >> your military advisers warned against withdrawing on this time frame and they wanted to you keep 2,500 troops. >> no, they didn't. it was split. that wasn't true. >> he didn't tell you they wanted troops to stay? >> no, not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a time frame all troops, they didn't argue against that. >> so no one told -- your military advisers did not tell you, no, we should just keep 2,500 troops, it's been a stable situation for the last several years, we can do that and continue to do that?

they were organized in a big way that they had significant help from other parts of the world. we went there for two reasons, george, two reasons -- one, to get bin laden and, two, to wipe out as best we could and we did the al qaeda in afghanistan. we did it. then what happened? it began to morph into the notion that instead of having a counterterrorism capability to have small forces in air or in the region to be able to take on al qaeda if it tried to reconstitute we decided to engage in nation building, in nation building. that never made any sense to me.

in hindsight and look but the idea that somehow there is a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, i don't know how that happens. i don't know how that happened. >> so for you that was always part of the decision. >> yes, now exactly what happened is not priced in, but i knew that they're going to have an enormous -- look, one of the things we didn't know is what the taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from

unlikely, you just said flat out it's highly unlikely the taliban would take over. >> the idea that the taliban would take over was premised on the notion that the -- that somehow the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was going to just collapse, were going to give up. i don't think anybody

quickly. >> but not this quickly, not even close. we had already issued several thousand passports to the sivs, the translators when i came into office before we had negotiated getting out at the end of

don't have chaotic scenes in kabul? >> number one, as you know, the intelligence community did not say back in june or july that, in fact, this was going to collapse like it did. number one. >> they thought the taliban would take over but not this quickly.

would stay as long as it takes to get all americans out. he was also defiant insisting we had to get out now admitting no mistakes. back in july you said a taliban takeover was highly unlikely. was the intelligence wrong, or did you downplay it? >> there was no consensus. if you go back and look at the intelligence reports.