Think Progress

AFGHANISTAN -- GATES SLAMS NATO FOR IGNORING AFGHANISTAN, MULLEN ADMITS IT'S A LOW PRIORITY: Testifying to the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticized NATO countries "for not supplying urgently needed trainers, helicopters and infantry for Afghanistan as violence escalates there." "I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point," Gates said, expressing frustration at "our allies not being able to step up to the plate." NATO may be responding to the United States's own message of priorities. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen "said the war in Afghanistan was an 'economy of force' operation, a military label for a mission of secondary importance." "Our main focus, militarily, in the region and the world right now is rightly and firmly in Iraq," Mullen said. "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must." Last month, the White House issued a pessimistic assessment of progress in Afghanistan, concluding "that the wide-ranging strategic goals that the Bush administration set for 2007 have not been met." 

TORTURE -- GITMO ADVISER REFUSES TO SAY WHETHER IRANIANS WATERBOARDING AMERICANS WOULD BE TORTURE: During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "The Legal Rights of Guantanamo Detainees" yesterday, Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, repeatedly refused to call the hypothetical waterboarding of an American pilot by the Iranian military torture. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked him directly if it would be a "violation of the Geneva Convention." Hartmann again said he wasn't "prepared to answer that question." Hartmann's non-answer is reminiscent of State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger's refusal in October to condemn "the use of water boarding on an American national by a foreign intelligence service." But other administration lawyers differ. In 2004, after then-acting assistant attorney general Daniel Levin had himself waterboarded, he concluded that the interrogation technique "could be illegal torture"; he was then forced out of the Justice Department when Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General. Graham, a former military judge advocate, has said before that someone doesn't "have to have a lot of knowledge about the law to understand this technique violates Geneva Convention Common Article Three."

ADMINISTRATION -- BIDEN ASKS WHETHER WHITE HOUSE'S PRESERVATION ORDER COVER CHENEY? After the media revealed last Thursday evening that the CIA had destroyed torture tapes, the White House and the Department of Justice delayed sending out a preservation order ensuring that federal government employees did not further destroy evidence. On Monday, the White House finally announced the preservation order but did not specify how far reaching the order is. Yesterday, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding asking the White House to specify. "Please confirm that the directive to preserve documents applied to the Executive Office of the President, including the National Security Council, in addition to immediate White House staff. In light of the Office of the Vice President's record of fatuous arguments that it is not subject to the authority of the President, please also confirm that the directive included the Office of the Vice President and that the Office of the Vice President intends to comply," Biden said. "Absent a preservation order, there is substantial risk that the torture evidence will disappear," noted lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Days after the CIA admitted it destroyed interrogation tapes, a U.S. appeals court ordered the Bush administration "to preserve any evidence relevant" to the case involving Majid Khan, a U.S. national held at Guantanamo Bay who alleges he was tortured while in CIA hands.

According to NASA scientists, "Through the first 11 months, 2007 is the second warmest year in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005."

"Forty people were killed and more than 125 wounded when three car bombs exploded in quick succession in the Shi'ite city of Amara in southern Iraq on Wednesday." The attacks "were among the deadliest this year in southern Iraq and came as tensions ran high across the region."

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI) and committee member Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) struck a deal "on a piece of housing legislation that would give bankruptcy-court judges more flexibility to alter the terms of certain mortgages." A markup of the bill will be held today.

Attempting to break a congressional impasse on appropriations legislation, Rep. David Obey (D-WI) advocated eliminating all congressional earmarks. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she was open to the idea, the plan "ran into deeply skeptical senators from both parties." 

Yesterday, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) wrote to Attorney General Mike Mukasey requesting that he "immediately appoint an independent counsel to investigate the circumstances surrounding" the destruction of interrogation tapes by the CIA.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously yesterday to reduce the large disparity between punishments for crack and powder cocaine offenders, giving approximately 20,000 federal inmates incarcerated for crack offenses a chance to reduce their sentences. The Bush administration strongly opposed the vote, arguing "it will make thousands of dangerous prisoners, many of them violent gang members, eligible for immediate release."

"Our main focus, militarily, in the region and in the world right now is rightly and firmly in Iraq," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen testified yesterday. "It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity. In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must."

"President Bush hailed a decade-long decline in teen drug use as proof that his administration's drug interdiction efforts are working. ... Bush said he wanted to 'celebrate progress' while acknowledging that there is still work to be done on curbing teen drug use."

And finally: Colbert is getting bored. "With his show in reruns while the writers continue to strike, Stephen Colbert needs something to do." The comedian was spotted walking across the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday "with a large portrait of himself on his back."