*

*Updated

Dang. Had an elder moment there. I’ve just read the transcript of the president’s address. He never described the evacuation in terms remotely equating to “orderly.” In fact, the words he used were “hard and messy.” I have redacted the post below. The president did say  “The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated”, which is directly in conflict with “…execute the plans we had put in place to respond to every contingency, including the rapid collapse we’re seeing now” and “We were cleareyed about the risks. We planned for every contingency.” 

4:43 p.m.

Okay. The president took "buck stops here" responsibility for the evacuation, but said he and his administration had planned for this hurried, chaotic evacuation. At the same time he said the Taliban overran the country sooner than expected. He spent by far the bulk of his time explaining how we got here in Afghanistan. It was a useful reminder but went on too long, i.m.o. He was very commanding, articulate, forceful. The purposefulness that I identified earlier today was the key, what is the path out?, there was little on that. The U.S. has taken over air traffic control. We will evacuate our troops, our personnel, those of our allies, Afghans who helped us. He acknowledged that we had had negotiations with the Taliban. He promised, and I full 100 believe him, that however the negotiations went, if one hair on the chinny chin-chins of our or our allies was harmed, or if our operations were interfered with, he would respond "forcefully." He was pissed at President Ghani. He said in June they spoke on the phone and Biden urgently asked him to negotiate with the Taliban. Ghani flat refused. It was clear that he was disgusted with the Afghan military's lack of will to fight for their own couintry. That's what I remember.

He did calm concerns about temperament, he gave no hint of an alarmed knee-jerk mind. But, not to make this read like a book review, I named what I thought he had to do in this speech, show us the path from here, and aside from being air traffic controllers and promising to give 'em hell, there were no specifics. And his description of the evacuation could have been something the Iraqi information minister said.