Updated

This is a rush transcript from "Your World," August 30, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Thank you, Martha, very much.

We are on top of two storms that are gripping the world right now, certainly our part of the world on the right with all the flooding and damage and winds and still more flooding and damage and winds to come from Hurricane Ida, now Tropical Storm Ida.

Also following what's going on in Afghanistan right now, with less than 24 hours to go before, well, we go and are gone. Where does that all stand right now?

Welcome, everybody. I'm Neil Cavuto and this is YOUR WORLD on a day of dramatic developments both on the Mother Nature storm and the storm brewing in Afghanistan, as we get ready to call it a day in less than a day after better than 20 years in that country.

Let's get the latest from Lucas Tomlinson right at the Pentagon with how Afghanistan and these final hours might look -- sir.

LUCAS TOMLINSON, FOX NEWS PENTAGON PRODUCER: Well, Neil, it's 12:30 a.m. in Afghanistan on August 31. That is the deadline for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan.

So we know that the last plane will leave Afghanistan sometime in the next few hours. We're just waiting for that word here at the Pentagon. It could be even more than that. But all eyes are on that last flight.

Neil, this comes as U.S. forces have actually come under attack in recent days, five rockets fired at U.S. forces. We heard from Jennifer Griffin's questioning earlier to John Kirby that one of those rockets came through. The C-RAM, that counter-rocket artillery and mortar system, did not shoot- down all the rockets. One did make it through, but it did not cause any damage to any personnel or aircraft.

And, of course, on Sunday, a second U.S. Reaper drone flying from Al Dhafra Air Force Base in the UAE launched another mission to destroy a suicide bomber, two of them that were in a vehicle, a van heading for the gate. It was destroyed just two miles from the front gate of the Kabul Airport, where U.S. forces remain.

And, of course, Friday night, that first drone strike, the first time the Biden administration had ordered a strike following that deadly suicide attack that killed 13 American service members, that drone on Friday night killing two ISIS planners.

It was notable today, Neil, that the Pentagon is still refusing to name those two ISIS fighters who were killed Friday night. They call them just planners. They did not call them leaders. Normally, the word planners here is reserved for lower-level fighters, Neil.

CAVUTO: All right, thank you very much for that, Lucas Tomlinson, at the Pentagon.

Today, we're getting word that in the last 24-hour period, about 6,000 individuals were evacuated from Kabul. You might be noticing a pattern that each day that gets to be a progressively smaller figure. We're told anywhere from 1, 300 to 1, 800 were on the tarmac supposedly waiting to depart as well. So those figures, we won't have until tomorrow.

And, of course, tomorrow, at this time, it will all be over unless something is miraculously extended. And that does not appear to be possible at this point. We will be able to give you some updated numbers.

Trey Yingst following all of this from Doha, Qatar -- Trey.

TREY YINGST, FOX NEWS FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Neil, good afternoon.

The last group of people making their way out of Afghanistan over the past 24 hours. Still, though, an estimated 80,000 Afghans with Special Immigrant Visas remain in country unable to flee. They join a small handful of Americans, officials estimate less than 250, that were not able to be evacuated.

Now, a senior State Department official does believe they have contact with the necessary Americans who want to leave, but were not able to make it to the airport. There were some disturbing reports, though, over the weekend of Afghan American University students being turned away from the airport.

The New York Times said a group of students gathered yesterday in a safe house and then took buses to the Kabul Airport. After waiting for seven hours, they were informed they would not be able to fly out. One student received an e-mail from the university, saying -- quote -- "I regret to inform you that the high command at HKIA and the airport has announced there will be no more rescue flights."

We have seen an uptick in recent days of people leaving on foot. Neighboring Iran and Pakistan have taken thousands of Afghan refugees, and we continue to hear stories of desperate Afghans fleeing other ways.

FOX has learned of a story tonight of a former translator in the U.S. Army taking a bus to Tajikistan. That individual described it as the most difficult ride of his life through Taliban checkpoints.

Now, Neil, in the coming hours, we likely will get confirmation from the U.S. government that the war is over in Afghanistan. Today, it is August 31 in Kabul, and it means that, according to the U.S. estimates, they will be wrapping up, heading home and this will all be said and done -- Neil.

CAVUTO: Just incredible.

Trey, thank you very much, Trey Yingst reporting.

Want to clarify something I said earlier. The White House is now saying that 6,000 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan. I assume that is since the Taliban took over Afghanistan. So, doing the rough math in my head, of the 115,000, who have been airlifted out of Kabul, 6,000 were Americans and the rest presumably Afghan nationals or friends of the United States. I'm sure they will update us on those figures.

I apologize for the confusion.

Let's go to Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, the former national security adviser to Vice President Pence.

General, very good to have you on a busy news day.

It looks like, when all is said and done, of the 115,000-plus evacuated, 6,000 were Americans and the rest all of these Afghan and Afghan nationals. What do you think of those numbers?

GEN. KEITH KELLOGG (RET.), FORMER TRUMP AND PENCE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Yes, well, Neil, thanks for having me on today.

CAVUTO: Thank you.

KELLOGG: The numbers are great.

I mean, getting that amount of people is -- out of Afghanistan is super, but what are we leaving behind? I think we're kind of congratulating ourselves for getting a certain number out. And yet it's an unforced error that we're even doing what we're doing right now.

And nobody can really tell me or you or your listeners out there how many are actually left behind and what conditions they are going to be left in. So, I mean, I congratulate the tactical units on the ground for getting the people out of there. I know they're collapsing the airhead, meaning getting ready to get out of there.

But this is almost surreal. I mean, when you think about, after 20 years, and I was in the Pentagon on 9/11. I'm just watching this go, and it's so much to unpack right now. So did we get people out? Yes. Congratulations for getting those people out.

Who did we leave behind? And why did we do that?

CAVUTO: Yes, we won't know for sure, certainly not anytime soon, General, to your point.

Also, General, I wanted to pick your brain a little bit on this Washington Post story that's gaining a little bit of traction and back and forth.

KELLOGG: Yes.

CAVUTO: That is that the U.S. agreed to let the Taliban control and secure Kabul right before -- at its taking.

What do you make of that?

KELLOGG: Yes, Neil, to me, that's an unforced error, I mean, first of all, even that we're talking to the Taliban about that.

But it makes sense to me, in the sense that Baradar, the political adviser of the Taliban, probably knew he couldn't control Kabul. And he probably turned to the Americans or -- the way the report goes from The Washington Post. And I don't know the veracity of it. But let's make an assumption that is true.

And turn it over to us and said, OK, can you control Kabul? And they probably went to the president of the United States as commander in chief, and he said, no, I don't want to do it, because it would have involved putting more troops on the ground to expand the perimeter.

But if your goal is to get every American out of there, and all of your allies out of there, then why not change the date that you made, and nobody else made it, and say, we're going to get our people out? It seems to be we could have negotiated that and worked that.

Instead, what they said was, nope, 31 August is a hard date. We're going to get out. And if we leave people behind, we leave people behind. But, I mean, this could be a truly unforced error, where we had the opportunity to expand the perimeter, put more troops in there until we got the people out that we wanted to get out, and then collapse the perimeter and go out.

I mean, it's almost like -- I hope we unpack this story more and more, because it really doesn't make sense to me. I don't know if it does to you. But, again, Neil, it doesn't make sense to me at all.

CAVUTO: Well, you're the expert, General. But even in my naive look at the region, if we had gotten that ability to secure Kabul, that would have meant that there would be no Taliban perimeter around the airport or anything that we ultimately saw that was compromised, obviously, by these ISIS-K bombings.

So, it's easy to Monday morning quarterback this, if indeed it was that way. But it's just part of a series of fateful decisions that brought us to where we are now. It doesn't look, as you know, General, that we're going to extend the deadline beyond tomorrow, roughly at this time, about 23 hours and 40 minutes from now.

What do you think of that?

KELLOGG: Yes.

Well, I know they're out of there. Look, what they're doing militarily is, they're actually collapsing the perimeter right now, the airhead. And General Donahue, who's the commander of the 82nd, is the guy in charge of it. And he knows how to do that.

You leave detachments left and contact. You slowly reduce the size of the airhead, and then you get out. And probably in the middle of the night, you get -- you're out of there, and you're gone. And so, tomorrow morning, when the sun rises in Afghanistan, the United States military will not be there. And that airfield will go back to control of the commercial activities that are currently there.

And I think that's what they're doing right now. And that militarily makes sense to me. But, I mean, tomorrow morning, when the sun arises in Afghanistan, I think everybody in America is going to take a deep breath and go, wow, 20 years, and this is how we leave after 9/11?

I mean, it was disorderly to get out of there, a lot of unforced errors. And I think there's going to be a really bad aftertaste in this whole thing, Neil, going forward.

CAVUTO: I just wonder as well, General, just to pick your brain on what will be Afghanistan after we leave.

We have the Taliban. We're dealing with these ISIS-K elements that supposedly are at odds with the Taliban. Well, I don't know what the real intelligence or skinny is on that. But it will be a mess, I think it's safe to say.

I'm just wondering how you see this old sorting out, if it does sort out.

KELLOGG: Well, I don't think it's going to go well.

I mean, the Taliban are not a governing body as you would you and I would understand a governing body. They're not Jeffersonian democrats there in Afghanistan. And it's going to be a nation in conflict. It has been since 327 B.C., when Alexander the Great found out about that and when the British found out about that.

And when the Russians went in, they found out about it. It's going to be a really an ungoverned territory going forward. And the problem is, it's going to have the capability and capacity to have a first-grade military because all the kit we left for them.

We left attack fighters on the ground. We left Black Hawk helicopters, more than Australia has, all those weapon systems that are out there, and you have got a government that is really not a government. It's basically a terrorist organization that now holds a lot of land.

And who knows what the future is going to bring. But I will tell you, it's going to be like the Badlands in the American West and the old days. You're going to have a lot of really bad people in that country. And we have no idea what's going to come out of it. And I don't think any of it, Neil, is going to be good. I just don't.

CAVUTO: General, thank you very much, General Keith Kellogg, the former national security adviser to Vice President Pence.

So we're continuing to monitor developments in Afghanistan.

But there was another storm to keep you abreast about, more the Mother Nature variety. Of course, I'm talking about Hurricane Ida, now Tropical Storm Ida. But she has really walloped the New Orleans region and Louisiana, Mississippi, and points north now that could see heavy winds and a lot of flooding in the meantime.

Mike Tobin in New Orleans with a lot more on that.

Hey, Mike.

MIKE TOBIN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: And, Neil, the damage you see around New Orleans is a lot of what you would expect, wind damage.

Behind me you see a roof that was pulled off. You got a lot of trees that were knocked over run, light posts that were knocked down. The boyhood home of Louis Armstrong collapsed during the storm. But it's not like the aftermath of Katrina. And that is because, after the $14 billion rebuild, the levee system was subject to its first major test.

And, according to Governor John Bel Edwards, it passed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JOHN BEL EDWARDS (D-LA): It would be a different story altogether had any of those levee systems failed.

Having said that, the damage is still catastrophic. But it was primarily wind-driven. But we know that there were some areas that received tremendous rainfall as well. But we're going to be dealing with this damage for quite a while.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TOBIN: It's a different story outside of the protection of the levee system.

In Lafayette, Louisiana, the levee there was overtopped, creating flash flooding. Also, a bridge there was damaged, leaving about 200 people trapped and in need of rescue. Even north of New Orleans, Slidell, Louisiana, more than a dozen people needed rescue. Some of them were trapped on their rooftops.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILLY THON, HURRICANE SURVIVOR: They got trees down, lines down everywhere. I'm lucky I made it right here, man. This is a bad one here, very bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TOBIN: Now, the big impact is power.

More than two million people are without power now. That means everyone in New Orleans and significant portions of the population across the state -- Neil.

CAVUTO: Mike, thank you very, very much, Mike Tobin following those developments.

In the meantime, back to what's happening right now with all of these refugees coming from Afghanistan. We broke it down for you, that roughly 115,000 have been airlifted out of the country. But the fact of the matter is, 6,000 of those were American, so the overwhelming majority of these Afghan nationals who have to find a home and make a home.

But what has the vetting process been like for them? And what is it like now?

Greg Palkot has been following all of that from Landstuhl, Germany -- Greg.

GREG PALKOT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Neil, yes, basically, we are in the final hours of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

And there are a lot of lives hanging in the balance. Take a look at what we saw today at a major U.S. military hub not far from where we are right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALKOT: Right now, there is a double focus for the U.S. military, getting all troops and gear out of Kabul by the Tuesday deadline and, of course, getting as many Afghans out of harm's way as soon as possible.

Ramstein Air Base here in Germany is a very busy place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PALKOT: Now, Neil, there are 18,000 Afghans now at that base. And they are being vetted, they are being checked, housed and fed.

The flow of incoming refugees from Kabul slowing down, only one plane in the last 36 hours. Flights out to the States, though, ramping up, 12 planes today with 2,000 on board. Still, there are thousands in Afghanistan who could be targeted by Taliban.

Hear what some refugees told us through a security fence and hear what the commanding general said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Taliban and ISIS, they are enemies. So, enemies never change.

PALKOT: Family is still there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, my family is still there.

PALKOT: You worry about them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do.

PALKOT: What about the future under the Taliban?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The future is -- I don't think the future will be very good.

PALKOT: Do you wish you had more time?

BRIG. GEN. JOSHUA OLSON, 86TH AIRLIFT WING COMMANDER: Always. Always. More time and more sleep. So...

PALKOT: But you're doing what you can.

OLSON: We're doing everything we can, again, going back to the humanity and providing hope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PALKOT: Humanity and providing hope, Neil.

General Olson did say that this base would be playing a role in the military evacuation as well. But, in fact, they are busy with this humanitarian mission. We're just about two miles from the base, Neil.

We have been hearing planes go over our heads for the past couple of hours, a lot of stuff going forward, but, again, a lot of people remaining behind -- back to you.

CAVUTO: All right, Greg Palkot, thank you for that.

Now, as Greg touched on, a lot of these Afghans are going to be housed at Air Force bases, military bases all around the country, certainly in the United States, a good many of them at Fort Bliss in Texas.

The former commanding general of that Fort Bliss facility joins us right now, the former ground commander in Iraq, co-author of "Hunting the Caliphate." I'm talking, of course, about General Dana J.H. Pittard.

General, very good to have you. And thank you for coming.

MAJ. GEN. DANA PITTARD (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Good afternoon, Neil. Good to be here.

CAVUTO: How will it go in your mind at Fort Bliss? And how will the process go and the continued weeding out of potential problems? But you generally hope that, by the time they arrive at Fort Bliss and these other facilities, all of that has been screened. But maybe you can explain what we might be in for.

PITTARD: Well, the Afghan refugees will be taken to several bases in Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and even New Jersey.

For Fort Bliss, Fort Bliss just happens to be the largest post by area in the United States Army. In fact, between Fort Bliss and the adjoining base, White Sands Missile Range, that's 25 percent of the U.S. Army's total land.

So there are places at Fort Bliss that are remote, where the refugees can be secured. Places like Donald Ana Range or MacGregor Range. And so the screening probably will not be that difficult, because it's away from a major population area like El Paso.

CAVUTO: Got it.

General, much has been made of the fact that, in the rush to get people out, maybe we didn't do our due diligence. There are reports of some cases where paperwork wasn't in order or there was no paperwork at all. It's too late to quibble over that now.

But I'm just wondering, in light of all of this, whether you fear some, some nefarious characters might, might have slipped through.

PITTARD: I'm sure there's always that possibility.

I think that's the beauty of taking them to a place like Fort Bliss, because it's 1.2 million acres of land. So, there are remote areas where more detailed screening can probably take place, the biometrics and everything else, and to keep American citizens safe, and to make sure that the Afghan refugees are in fact safe, and can safely move into society by going through those remote areas.

CAVUTO: So, General, as our former commander in Iraq, you have heard these Washington Post stories that report, the early days -- early days -- a little more than a few weeks ago, I guess, the U.S. had agreed to let the Taliban take control and essentially run Kabul.

What do you make of that? What do you think that has created since?

PITTARD: Well, again, if true, I have got a lot of confidence in General Ken McKenzie, who is the commander of CENTCOM. I know him.

Trying to secure a city of Kabul, as large as it is, would be extremely difficult if you do not have the troops to do it. Apparently, he chose to secure the Kabul Airport, which was more within the constraints that he was given as far as troops.

So maybe that's a possibility. The initial planning, as discussed before, I think was very poor, when the withdraw and, in fact, abandonment of Afghanistan took place. Now, the evacuation itself, with 114,000 citizens, Afghan and American citizens, being taken out was done well, once that took place.

The initial planning was terrible.

CAVUTO: So the 6,000 troops that ultimately were targeted to be there for this ultimate withdrawal from the country and to help people evacuate, that would have been way too small to take control and include in your operations Kabul, right?

How many troops do you think we should have had if that were the -- if that was the call?

PITTARD: It's hard to estimate.

Kabul, millions of people in Kabul. I think it would have taken at least a division level force of 20,000 to 30,000 to secure all of Kabul. So, General Ken McKenzie chose the smaller footprint of what he thought he could control.

CAVUTO: You know, General Pittard, I'm curious.

As someone who's written extensively on hunting the caliphate and all that stuff, now trying to make sense of what Afghanistan that looks like in light of warring terrorist groups like this new ISIS-K and the Taliban and others, what is Afghanistan like right now? And from the new Afghanistan, whatever evolves, is it a threat to us?

Is what's happening there a potential physical threat to us?

PITTARD: Well, the new Afghanistan is Taliban-run.

So, potentially, it is a threat. And time will tell. If the Taliban allow Al Qaeda, ISIS-K and other terrorist groups to exist and to operate within Afghanistan, that's a problem. And that's a problem that we're going to have to deal with.

CAVUTO: General, the administration, others have criticized -- been criticized for not being able to fathom the rapid fall of the Afghan government. They were not alone. But the rap is that by not appreciating how quickly the government could fall, we were caught off-guard and in the position we're now in kind of running out of town in the next 23 hours.

Do you agree with that, that people should have been more aware of that potential, especially as the Taliban was accelerating its run and takeover the country at a pretty swift pace, as this discussion was going back and forth?

PITTARD: I'm just not sure how -- how anybody could really predicted how quickly the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government would have fallen.

We have had examples, though, and parallels. If you remember, in Iraq, in 2011, when President Obama moved all troops -- I think it was an ill- advised -- moved all troops out of Iraq, within three years, ISIS was able to fester and form in Iraq and Syria.

So, in 2014, when ISIS attacked Iraq and took over a third of Iraq's territory and the city of Mosul of over a million people, at that time, five Iraqi divisions were defeated, and the Iraqi security forces were melting. At that time, people thought something very similar is that ISIS would take Baghdad and the Iraqi security forces would be ineffective and the government could fall.

A different path was chosen, though, with a small footprint of U.S. soldiers, which I was very, very honored to lead in a different pathway. Instead of evacuating the embassy, we ended up fighting ISIS.

I just wonder, as we look at the current situation in Afghanistan, if it had been really thought through by the administration, that, without the backbone of U.S. forces, how long did we think the Afghan security forces would last, unless we knew, in fact that they could handle the fight?

So I wish that it had been thought through much more. I wish there hadn't been a treaty -- or not treaty, an agreement made by the previous administration, Trump administration, with the Taliban to get us in this place in the first place.

However, President Biden is the president. He could have chose differently, and he could have had a vision of what the region should be looking like. And I'm not sure that vision is what we're seeing right now, a Taliban-run Afghanistan.

CAVUTO: So your argument, General, just to be clear, is that a presence, even a small presence of 2,000, 2, 500, 2, 600 troops would have been enough to at least avoided what we saw happen?

PITTARD: I think so, a small footprint, maybe 2, 500, maybe 3, 500.

But they were basically enablers. They were able to help conduct airstrikes. They helped secure the massive airfield at Bagram Air Base. They were able to do intelligence. They were also able to be a good platform against other terrorist groups that are in the region.

Now what we find ourselves is in a position where we have a Taliban-run government and we have no assets in the region to be able to protect ourselves from abroad from terrorism that could come here.

So, yes, I think it could have been done differently. And if it had been explained that way to the American people, I think the American people might have understood that.

But we had not only this administration, but the previous administration, that was focused on domestic politics, and for just getting out of Afghanistan, and not really explaining to the American people the strategic impact of leaving.

CAVUTO: Finally, sir, Donald Trump has been commenting on this thing, saying this would have never happened under his watch, saying: "Never in history has a withdrawal from war been handled so badly or incompetently."

He goes on to say: "In addition to the obvious, all equipment should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States. That includes every penny of the $85 billion in cost. If it's not handed back," he says, "we should either go in with unequivocal military force and get it or bomb the hell out of it."

What do you think of that?

PITTARD: Well, I think there's enough blame to go around for four administrations of presidents with Afghanistan.

I do agree, though, that leaving much of our military equipment is a wrong decision. So if it is important equipment, it's equipment that should be destroyed. I do agree with that.

CAVUTO: Now, to the notion that this would not have happened had he been president, what do you make of that?

PITTARD: Again, I don't want to do Monday morning quarterbacking on this, but the agreement that his administration did was really a cut-and-run agreement with the Taliban.

In fact, much of the negotiations of the Taliban didn't even include that the current Afghan government that we supported. So, the movement early out of Afghanistan was already in play when President Trump was around.

However, the actual plan for the evacuation itself, that's on President Biden and his current national security team.

CAVUTO: Finally, General -- you have been very patient -- everyone worries about this so close to the 9/11 anniversary, that something is going to happen. They fear this has raised the risk of that.

Do you share that concern?

PITTARD: Always concerned when there's a 9/11 anniversary, of course.

We just all have to be vigilant as a nation. We got to keep our feelers out intelligence-wise throughout the world, and also be looking for things that just don't seem right domestically and around in our neighborhoods. We just have to be vigilant -- or vigilant as a people.

CAVUTO: General, thank you very, very much. I appreciate it and your service to this country, sir, General Pittard.

I want to go right to Jennifer Griffin at the Pentagon right now to update us on some news regarding Afghanistan -- Jennifer.

JENNIFER GRIFFIN, FOX NEWS NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Neil, we have just heard from sources on the ground in Afghanistan that Taliban guards at the airport are saying that the last American warplanes have left Kabul Airport. There are no more U.S. warplanes at that airport.

The American presence is gone from the airport. I can confirm with multiple U.S. officials that I have spoken to in recent moments America's longest war is officially over. In fact, the last military transport plane took off and almost out of Afghan airspace. It's at the border as we speak.

So what we can say right now is that America's longest war is over. We expect a briefing here at the Pentagon any minute. If we look back on the cost of this war, Neil, 2, 461 Americans killed in action, 13 of them in just the last week as they were carrying out this humanitarian mission to bring Americans and their allies to safety, 6,000 Americans evacuated since August 14, 122,000 Afghan allies.

In the past 20 years of war, more than 20,000 American service members were wounded fighting against the Taliban, the very same group that harbored the Al Qaeda terrorists who struck the United States on September 11. That same group marched into Kabul on August 14 of this year, 20 years later. Today, they are back in control of Kabul -- Neil.

CAVUTO: So, Jennifer, the last plane left today.

Do you know how many were evacuated today?

GRIFFIN: We do not have any of those figures.

I know that, in the last 24 hours, as of 3:00 a.m., 1, 200 people were evacuated. We understand that, as of now, the total Americans who might be left on the ground in Afghanistan, and the State Department says that that is about 250, they're making arrangements now, now that the U.S. military is gone from Kabul Airport.

They're making other arrangements with partners and allies to try and get those Americans, if they do actually want to leave Afghanistan, to get them safe passage.

But we can report right now that the last U.S. warplanes left Kabul Airport and are on their way to safety.

CAVUTO: So, the remaining 23 hours or so of our presence in Afghanistan will be about what, getting remaining military personnel, attaches, those types out of the country?

GRIFFIN: No.

CAVUTO: Essentially closing up shop.

GRIFFIN: Actually, Neil, as of midnight, Kabul time, those last warplanes took off. So all Americans are gone from Afghanistan, in terms of U.S. military, in terms of diplomats.

The war is officially over.

CAVUTO: So all Americans are gone right now, as we speak?

GRIFFIN: All U.S. military personnel, all State Department personnel were on those final flights. And those flights took off from Kabul Airport. We have confirmed it with U.S. officials. And we also have confirmation from Taliban officials at the airport who say that the last U.S. flights left.

CAVUTO: Do those who've been waiting, the many who have been waiting in Kabul and these other areas to be jetted out of the country, are they aware of this, do you know?

GRIFFIN: I believe that given the security considerations, that that is not something that was communicated, per se, but they would certainly have seen the gates being closed, the gates being sealed.

But now the Taliban has announced that it's in control of the airport. And there were negotiations taking place with NATO allies, with the Turks, as well as the Qataris, to work with the Taliban to try and reopen that airport at some -- airport at some point to civilian aircraft.

But right now, the last U.S. warplanes are nearly out of Afghan airspace. In fact, they may have -- in fact, as of right now, they are out of Afghan airspace. They were -- they were going to cross two minutes ago.

So, the last U.S. forces are out of Afghanistan.

CAVUTO: You know, Jennifer, I keep putting you on the spot. And I don't mean to.

But you know the area and the people there so well. For the thousands who were waiting to get out of there, what is their fate?

GRIFFIN: I think you can't put too fine a point on it that we don't know what happens next in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are a vicious terrorist organization. They are now the government of Afghanistan. They have made certain promises to the U.S. government. They kept some of those promises while U.S. forces were on the ground, and that they were...

CAVUTO: All right, Jennifer, I apologize.

This briefing has now started, again, a Pentagon briefing.

Our troops, our people are now largely out of Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan, to their point, is over. Let's go to the Pentagon.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

CAVUTO: It is over. Our 20-year ordeal in Afghanistan is over.

The last plane has flown out of the country. And the reading from the general oversaw the process is that it is now up to the Taliban to make it a new country, giving compliments to the Taliban and their cooperation to make sure this evacuation worked.

There were some bumps, to put it mildly, including the death of 13 of our soldiers and close to 200 Afghans. There are thousands, we're told, that are still left behind, but for whom the general says there are evacuation hopes, just not ones involving the U.S. military.

The State Department will be shortly briefing Americans on what could come next and what role they will play with the new Taliban government, the same Taliban that was behind terror attacks 20 years ago, very different.

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