Kirby: ‘Good Thing’ Tally of Americans in Afghanistan Wanting to Leave Increased, More Wanted to Leave as Evacuations Were ‘Successful’

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby argued that it’s a “good thing” that the numbers of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave increased, and one issue “is that as we have proven successful at getting more out, more and more are now becoming more comfortable saying, hey, we want to go, too.”

Kirby said the number “was a bit of a moving target throughout the evacuation. Because, as you know, we don’t require American citizens to register their presence in Afghanistan. Some of them are — most of them are dual nationals, so they were struggling with whether to leave or not. So, sometimes we’d get an indication that I want to go, and then they might change their mind and so they’d be taken off the list. So, the number was a bit of a moving target. But what I think is encouraging, though, is that now almost 1,000, since August 31, since we left, have been brought out and we’re continuing to look for others that want to go.”

He added that there were “lots of assumptions” in the numbers, “maybe they left overland to Pakistan or maybe they just didn’t want to declare that they were ready to go. The bottom line is, I think part of the problem — or the issue is that as we have proven successful at getting more out, more and more are now becoming more comfortable saying, hey, we want to go, too. So, again, we don’t think it’s a bad thing that the numbers increased. We think it’s a good thing and we’re going to continue at this.”

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