Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says US will look for every way possible to get people to Kabul airport

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, appeared on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

No one predicted that the Afghanistan government would collapse in 11 days, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in an exclusive interview with ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz. "It was a very rapid, fast-moving, fast-paced evolution," Austin said. "This all occurred in a span of about 11 days. Nobody predicted that, you know, the government would fall in 11 days." Austin said early U.S. intelligence estimates varied widely as to how long the Afghan government could last against the Taliban after a U.S. military withdrawal. "There were assessments that ranged initially from one to two years to, you know, several months, but it was a wide range of -- of assessments," Austin said. "As the Taliban began to make gains, and then we saw that in a number of cases, there was less fighting and more surrendering and more forces just kind of evaporating, it was very difficult to predict with accuracy."