Senators Webb & McCaskill Seek Independent Panel To Probe Wartime Profiteering [View All]

Freshmen Senate Democrats seek panel to probe Iraq contracting
By David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wed, July 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — Summoning the ghost of Harry Truman, the Senate's freshman Democrats on Wednesday called for the creation of an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate wartime profiteering in Iraq.

Truman was a freshman senator from Missouri in 1941 when he led an inquiry into waste and abuse in government contracting during World War II.

Under the 2007 version of his effort, spearheaded by Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jim Webb of Virginia, the proposed commission would investigate the mismanagement of private contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has resulted in $9 billion in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for.

McCaskill, a former state auditor who uses Truman's old Senate desk, said at a press conference of freshmen lawmakers, "I realized we had the same problem in this war that Harry Truman found in World War II, except that it's on steroids. It's out of control."

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