Biden on Afghanistan: "Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home"
CBSN
President Biden took questions from reporters Friday for the first time since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, outside a Wednesday interview with ABC News, pledging that the U.S. will get any American home who wants to come home. The president's address comes as tens of thousands of American citizens, legal residents and their families and vulnerable Afghans struggle to flee the country.
The president started out his speech by touting what the U.S. has done so far — evacuated 18,000 people in recent weeks, and 5,700 people in the last 24 hours alone. Mr. Biden said the U.S will do "everything, everything" it can to evacuate as many Afghans who have aided the U.S. as possible. The Pentagon has said it will be possible to fly 5,000 to 9,000 per day out of Kabul, but that's dependent on multiple factors. "But let me be clear. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home," Mr. Biden told reporters in the White House East Room.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.