WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- A U.S. Democratic congresswoman has called for a congressional probe into the soaring costs of the Iraq war.
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the Rules Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Wednesday called for the creation of a modern "Truman Commission" to investigate the stealing, waste and abuse of funds appropriated to pay for the Iraq war and reconstruction plans there.
"It is long past time for Congress to convene a new Truman Commission so that we can aggressively reign in the waste and corruption that are bogging us down in Iraq," Slaughter said. She was responding to news reports that overhead costs associated with U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq over the past three-and-a-half years have soared out of control.
The Truman Commission was chaired by then Sen. Harry S. Truman and probed the U.S. war effort during World War II, exposing government and private industry failings, incompetence and waste. It was credited with saving billions of dollars and thousands of lives.
"The unprecedented fraud, abuse, and misuse of reconstruction resources has been documented time and again," she said. "Billions of dollars have gone missing. Hundreds of millions more have likely been misspent. As usual, well-connected contractors like Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root have been the beneficiaries."
"By willfully failing to exercise any oversight over reconstruction efforts in Iraq, this Republican Congress has endangered the lives of Iraqi civilians, put our troops at risk, and made it far less likely that Iraq will become a stable state in the near future," Slaughter said.
