Republican Sen. Richard Burr is heading to Afghanistan later this week.

News of the trip was disclosed at an economic conference Monday morning in Durham by Bob Ingram, a close friend of Burr, who introduced the senator, a Republican from Winston-Salem. No details of the trip were immediately available.

The Burr trip comes at a critical time when the administration of President Barack Obama is deciding whether to increase the U.S. troop commitment to that country to fight the Taliban.

The state House remembered fallen soldiers today.

The House clerk read aloud the names of soldiers from North Carolina who died in Iraq and Afghanistan since May of 2008 in a joint resolution to express its "profound gratitude" for their sacrifices.

Several legislators praised the soldiers, but one had a more personal reason to remember.

Rep. Ronnie Sutton, a Robeson County Democrat, said the fewest words but had the most emotional impact of any of the speakers.

"I direct your attention to page 3, line 27," he said, noting the spot where the name of Lance Cpl. Jeriad P. Jacobs of Clayton was listed. "That's my nephew."

After gathering himself for a moment, he went on: "He's a 19-year-old Marine, the only son of my sister Janet. He was killed while on patrol after less than three months in Iraq. Thank you."

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan spent the last two days in Afghanistan talking to commanders and troops, the U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and President Hamid Karzai.

Her impressions after visiting two of the country's most dangerous provinces, Kandahar and Helmand, were that U.S. troops are doing a great job under harsh conditions, reports Lynn Bonner.

"They're definitely committed to what they're doing," she said in a Memorial Day conference call with reporters.

Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, went to the Middle East with a contingent of other senators on her first overseas trip since taking office.

One of the challenges for the U.S. is to convince the Afghan people "we aren’t going to desert them," Hagan said. "They don't support the Taliban at all. We need to convince them that the Afghan government can provide a peaceful life."

It will take time to develop leaders in a country that has endured three decades of war, Hagan said.

The senators met Karzai at his palace, Hagan said, where the president was very warm and receptive.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama ordered more troops to Afgahnistan, including 4,000 from the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg to train Afghan forces. About 300 Marines from Camp Lejeune left for the country last week.

Karzai told the senators that the "extra troops were very important," Hagan said, and that "he needs civilians to help rebuild infrastructure in his country."

The senators told Karzai of their concerns that he fight corruption in his country and look to build national leadership from people of all tribes and ethnic groups.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr said he is disappointed that President Obama released memos from the Bush administration.

In an e-mail to Dome, the Winston-Salem Republican said that making public the memos from the Office of Legal Counsel supporting the brutal interrogation methods used by the CIA could hurt the troops and help terrorists.

"I am disappointed that the Administration chose, over the objections of some of our most respected intelligence experts, to selectively release for seemingly political purposes, highly classified OLC memos detailing the legal analysis relating to the CIA’s sensitive interrogation techniques," he said.

He also said that the torture methods outlined in a recent Senate Armed Services Committee report were "shocking," but they would not happen again.

"The unfortunate incidents outlined in the recently released Armed Services Committee report that occurred at some of our nation’s detention facilities were shocking and damaged our reputation in the global community, but measures have been taken to prevent occurrences like this from happening in the future," he said. 

Previously: Sen. Kay Hagan 'deeply concerned' by report. 

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan said she is "deeply concerned" by a recent report on torture.

The Greensboro Democrat told Dome that she was troubled by a report from the Senate Armed Services Committee about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan.

"I am opposed to torture and deeply concerned about the information revealed in these documents," she said in a statement. "I have two nephews serving our country on active duty and the thought of them being tortured is unfathomable to me."

Hagan added that military psychologists have said the information gleaned from suspects "may have been unreliable and unusable."

"Our country needs reliable and accurate information to protect itself; I'm concerned that the information gained using these techniques was neither," she said.

The 232-page report was drawn from more than 70 interviews and 200,000 pages of classified and unclassified documents.

Both Hagan and Sen. Richard Burr serve on the committee.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan will be with Vice President Joe Biden today in Fayetteville to welcome home the 18th Airborne Corps home from Iraq.

Hagan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is standing with the Obama administration’s foreign policy in other ways as well, Rob Christensen reports.

"I think the fact that we are drawing down troops in Iraq is good," Hagan said in an interview this week. She also has a personal interest with a nephew who is serving with the Army in Iraq.

She also supports the Obama efforts to put more troops into Afghanistan, particularly efforts to go after Al Qaeda in the rough mountain ranges bordering Pakistan. But she also worries about the long-term committment of military action in the region.

"It's good that Obama has been listening the generals on the ground in putting together a plan to go forward," Hagan said. "I'm obviously concerned about the long-term significance of it.

"But I certainly do support him in this effort," she said.

She would also like to see the NATO nations increase their in the region, so the U.S. does not have to do it alone.

* Bills would set up state and local funding options for rail and transit improvements, including a half-cent sales tax.

* Gary Robertson and Mike Baker of the capital press corps were awarded the 2008 North Carolina AP Staffers of the Year for election coverage.

* A tiny mouse named "Scoop" shuts down political reporting for an hour as reporters scramble to humanely remove him from the legislature.

* President Obama tells Camp Lejeune Marines that he wants to make sure they have 12-month deployments to Afghanistan, not 15-month ones.

The Obama administration’s decisions about new ambassadors in two U.S. war zones may have had Tar Heel influences.

Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, a Goldsboro native, is widely reported as the pick for ambassador to Afghanistan. The 1969 graduate of Goldsboro High School served in Afghanistan for three years, including a tour while in charge of rebuilding Afghanistan’s Army and an 18-month stint in command of U.S. forces, reports Jay Price.

Eikenberry’s resume is almost ludicrously broad. He graduated from West Point, earned master’s degrees in East Asian studies from Harvard and in political science from Stanford and an advanced degree in Chinese history from Nanjing University, and he was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

He speaks Mandarin Chinese so well that he is qualified as a translator. He graduated from the Army’s Ranger School, holds a commercial pilot’s license and master parachutist’s wings. In his spare time, according to an Army biography, he sails and scuba dives.

Eikenberry may have played an unwitting role in the selection of Christopher Hill, a career diplomat, as ambassador to Iraq.

In the latest drama over an Obama appointment, retired Gen. Anthony C. Zinni has said he was essentially given the job last month and then had it yanked back. A New York Times article Friday said the administration may have decided that naming two generals to such high profile diplomatic posts at the same time wasn’t a good idea.

Another North Carolina-related problem for Zinni may have been his recent job as a vice-president of the military contractor DynCorp. Last week, the State department told N.C.-based Blackwater Worldwide that it did not plan to renew Blackwater’s contract for guarding diplomats and the embassy in Iraq.

One of the two most likely replacement companies? DynCorp.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole voted for two other minimum wage increases.

In February of 2007, the Senate voted on a House bill which would have increased the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over two years. The hike was coupled with small business tax cuts opposed by some Democrats, who preferred a clean vote.

That bill passed 94-3, with Dole voting for it. It was never signed into law, however.

In May of that same year, the minimum wage increase was included in an emergency supplemental appropriations bill that included almost $100 billion in spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That time, some Republicans complained that it was paired with war funding.

The first hike in a decade, it raised the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three stages over the following two years.

The approprations bill passed 80-14, with Dole voting for it. 

State Rep. Grier Martin said that John McCain is too focused on Iraq.

In a phone interview, the Raleigh Democrat countered some of the arguments made by a Veterans for McCain rally in Raleigh today, arguing that the Iraq war is diverting resources from Afghanistan.

Martin, who served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, is currently co-chairman of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's state veterans group.

He said that some of the progress he saw in that country is "coming undone" because the Bush administration "placed Afghanistan on the backburner" to fight the Iraq war.

"The attacks of Sept. 11 were plotted and launched by Al Qaeda leadership based in Afghanistan," he said. "If we fail in Afghanistan, we run the risk of it becoming another home for terrorism."

He said that long-term victory in Iraq will consist of a stable, Democratic government, but he argued that cannot be achieved with military action alone.