Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen are giving a classified briefing to the Senate on Iraq and Afghanistan operations this afternoon, administration and Hill sources say.
The entire Senate was invited, and about 85+ showed up for the 90 minute session in the Senate's secure auditorium, a person familiar with the briefing said. It was the administration's first operations briefing on Iraq & Afghanistan.
While the focus was Afghanistan and Iraq, from where Gates just returned, it "covered the waterfront" in the questions and answer period, including Iran, Pakistan, and the situation of the estimated 2 million internally displaced people there.
Iran was also a focus of the senators' questions, a second source said, who said members were interested in understanding recent public comments on Iran -- and some seeming variations between them --- by Gates in Israel, Clinton in Thailand and on Meet the Press, and Mullen.
Members afterwards commented to them how different the dynamic was between the Secretary of Defense/Secretary of State (as compared to Rice/Rumsfeld especially), and how much more collegial their interaction was with the room, the first source said. Clinton noted that she was among friends and former colleagues: "A year ago the President, Vice President and I would be sitting where you are," she said.
Clinton and Gates spoke a lot about the civilian-military effort in Afghanistan, with Clinton stressing that in addition to the 4,000 Marines going in, hundreds of direct hires are going to be added in Afghanistan on the civilian side.
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