Auditing the War

We want out money back, and we're pretty sure we know where it is.

Auditing the War | The American Prospect:

Claire McCaskill, the freshman senator from Missouri who sits in Harry Truman's desk in the Senate and who has earned her own reputation as a straight-talker, went to Baghdad last week. She wanted to get a look at how we were spending the $2 billion that is gushing out of the Treasury each and every week for the war in Iraq.

The former state auditor, who has been railing about the need for more congressional oversight since she got to Washington, returned from her visit lamenting the 'cost-plus' contracts that have enriched so many of the independent contractors doing business with the U.S. government in Iraq. Such contracts pay contractors a profit as a percentage of whatever the project costs.

She allowed that she had eaten in very nice mess halls, and wanted to assure her constituents that the troops were eating well. But 'cost-plus is a dangerous contracting device,' she insisted in a conference call with reporters from Kuwait, 'because what cost-plus says to someone is, 'The more you spend, the more you make.' And that's a dangerous thing to do around public dollars.'