Murtha To Cut Funds For Iraq Contractors To Force Pentagon’s Hand

Murtha To Cut Funds For Iraq Contractors To Force Pentagon’s Hand

Today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other House leaders held a press briefing to announce their Iraq war spending plan, which would redeploy U.S. forces out of Iraq by August 2008 at the latest. More details HERE: http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=98

Another provision of the bill was detailed by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), chairman of the defense spending subcommittee. Murtha explained that the Pentagon has repeatedly stonewalled information about the role of private contractors in Iraq. “I asked the Under Secretary of Defense. He says, ‘I’ll let you know tomorrow.’ We’ve never gotten an answer back,” Murtha said.

Now, Murtha says, both the Government Accountability Office and the Special Inspector General for Iraq have come to him and said, “Help us get a handle on the contractors.” So Murtha is going to play hardball. “We took five percent of their money out, and that’s about $800 million. We also fenced 10 percent of their money. We want answers about whether these contractors — how much it costs us, how many we have, and how the contracts are being, are being given to these various organizations.”

Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/08/murtha-contractors/

at the start of this war...