Thank you, Anderson. I'm Chris Cuomo and welcome to Primetime. Here's the good news.

The administration is now on message. All Americans must be evacuated from Afghanistan.

But can they make it happen? That question looms as we are learning more about the truth.

And the truth is this chaos was not inevitable. Our Secretary of State was warned by his own people

on the ground and cobble of possible catastrophe in Afghanistan. When was he warned? A month ago.

A month ago he was urged to take swift action to get the Afghans who've been helping us out

of the country. CNN has learned about the classified cable to Tony Blinken,

signed by more than a dozen U.S. diplomats in mid-July, which laid out how the State Department

could speed up the process of Afghans applying for SIV or refugee status because they knew Afghanistan

was falling fast. Again, they knew Afghanistan was falling fast. According to Department officials,

those diplomats now feel their warnings were ignored. Now what is the key here?

The key is to get better results. But part of that is being straight about where we are and how we

got here. Yes, there is also a rush to judgment about what's happening there. People are already

concluding that it's over that this is a failure. We don't know that yet. It is premature to judge.

But the sooner the administration shows it can get more people out, the sooner the naysayers

will have to shut up. But be clear, this situation on the ground is getting worse.

This is how the Taliban does things. That is open fire on crowds that aren't doing what they want

them to do. The biggest challenge on the ground for the United States mission is reach. Listen.

At this point, we don't have the resources to go beyond the airport compounds.

At this time, as Armean mission continues to be to secure H.K. to allow those American

citizens and other SIVs to come in and be processed at the airfield. Again, that may be true.

But it can't mean that everyone outside the airport is abandoned. That is unacceptable. So,

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