| WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Bill Delahunt announced today that on Thursday, June 8, the House International Relations Committee will hold its second hearing on Iraq in two years, reflecting the Republican-led panel’s reluctance to examine the activities of a GOP Administration. The hearing, entitled “Review of Iraq Reconstruction” will look into allegations of widespread fraud and incompetence in the effort to restore Iraq’s essential services after the US invasion.
“The waste and corruption in Iraq has been simply mind-boggling,” said Delahunt. “Billions of American taxpayer dollars have been squandered on no-bid contracts for work that is never completed. Politically-connected companies are handed sweetheart deals while US troops have to fight for body armor to defend themselves. $9 billion of the Iraqi people’s money simply vanished while the US ran Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004. But the IR Committee has resisted every effort to examine what has been going on and to bring those responsible to account.”
“As a former prosecutor I know that it’s critical to gather evidence soon after the crime has occurred,” continued Delahunt, who served for two decades as the District Attorney in Norfolk County, MA, and is now the senior Democrat on the panel’s Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations. “But during one of the most crucial periods of the occupation, the Committee’s leadership blocked or ignored efforts to look into the growing charges of mismanagement and outright theft that have hampered our efforts in Iraq and discredited America’s image abroad.”
Delahunt noted that he sent multiple letters to the Committee’s Chairman, Henry Hyde of Illinois, urging investigations of various aspects of US policy towards Iraq. The requests were never answered. Likewise, efforts by Democrats on the panel to force the Bush Administration to turn over key documents were repeatedly defeated by party-line votes.
The Committee’s previous hearing on Iraq, held on April 26 of this year, came only after Delahunt and all of his Democratic colleagues on the panel wrote to Chairman Hyde demanding that the Congress fulfill its constitutional responsibility to oversee the activities of the executive branch. Before that, the last hearing the Committee held on US policy in Iraq was on May 13, 2004.
Thursday’s hearing, which begins at 10:00 AM, will be webcast on the IR Committee’s website at http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/.
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