Congressional Democrats begin today to investigate how the Bush administration handled the business end of the Iraq war.
The question of whether the investigations will be enough to satisfy the anti-war critics who gave the Democrats their majority is still to be answered.
Senate Democrats opened hearings last week on the war strategy.
But what Republicans sneered at as “government by investigation” begins today, when the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee convenes a closed-door meeting to examine war contracts.
“There’s a lot of contractor malfeasance that we’ve been told about,” said Virginia Democrat Jim Moran, a member of the subcommittee. “We need to determine how much of it is hearsay and how much of it is real.”
The subcommittee is chaired by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., one of the war’s most strident critics.
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has also promised to take a long look at Iraq contracts.
Vice President Dick Cheney was a former executive at Halliburton, which won billions in no-bid war contracts. Democrats say, privately, that exposing profiteering there will be a triple victory: It will promote the Democrats as the foes of waste, fraud and abuse; it will embarrass the vice president; and it will unite their own caucus, which has not come up with a comprehensive Iraq strategy.
Murtha became a national figure when he called for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., blasted Murtha’s proposal. There are similar divisions in the Senate.
As a compromise, Democratic leaders are touting a nonbinding resolution condemning the administration’s Iraq policy.
Some anti-war critics already are voicing disappointment in Democratic leadership.
“No one from among the Democratic or Republican leadership is distinguishing him- or, more pointedly, herself in opposition to the war by doing anything beyond verbal statements and ‘sense of Congress’ resolutions that have no legislative ‘bite,’ ” said Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information, a Pentagon-reform group.
