War is being criticized

They may not be able to end the war in Iraq, but Senate Democratic freshmen are going after the war profiteers. Here are portions from a press release Senator Jim Webb, one of those newcomers, put out today:
Senate Democratic freshmen today introduced a bill to establish an independent, bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting to investigate U.S. wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Commission would significantly increase transparency and accountability and generate important solutions for systematic contracting problems, potentially saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
The Commission will study and investigate the impact of the government's growing reliance on civilian contractors to perform wartime functions. It will assess the extent of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of wartime contracts, and the extent to which those responsible have been held accountable....
"We are outsourcing this war in ways we've never seen," [said] Webb. "Defrauding the government of millions of taxpayer dollars should not be considered 'the cost of doing business." It's time for Congress to stand up on behalf of the American people and say: 'We want our money back.'"
"During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt said, 'I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.' And so Missouri's own Senator Harry Truman created a committee that investigated and uncovered millions of dollars in wasteful, wartime spending," Senator McCaskill said.
"We know that the cost plus contracts used in Iraq and Afghanistan are nearly blank checks to private defense contractors, primed for waste, fraud and abuse. We need a new investigatory body, inspired by the Truman Committee, to protect our tax dollars and bring better accountability to the way we do business while at war," continued McCaskill....
In Tuesday's USA Today story entitled "Largest Iraq Contract Rife with Errors," government auditors reviewing contractor KBR Inc.'s annual cost estimate for services in Iraq discovered that the company proposed $110 million in charges for housing, food, water, laundry and other services on bases that had been shut down. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-07-16-iraq-auditors_N.htm)
An audit conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found that the Parsons Company received $186 million over the past three years to construct 142 health-care centers in Iraq. As of May 10, only 15 centers had been completed--and only eight were open to the public...



Finally something is being done to stop the war in iraq. This should have happened a long time ago we have been just wasting money on the war.