claire mccaskill, senator from mo, returns from iraq

and she has plenty to say.

let's just hope her actions echo her words

prospect.org/cs/articles?article=auditing_the_war

Terence Samuel

Claire McCaskill, who has Harry Truman's old Senate seat, returns from Iraq with some blunt talk on the war and contracting abuse.

Claire McCaskill, the freshman senator from Missouri who sits in Harry Truman's desk in the Senate and who has earned her own reputation as a straight-talker, went to Baghdad last week. She wanted to get a look at how we were spending the $2 billion that is gushing out of the Treasury each and every week for the war in Iraq.
The former state auditor, who has been railing about the need for more congressional oversight since she got to Washington, returned from her visit lamenting the 'cost-plus' contracts that have enriched so many of the independent contractors doing business with the U.S. government in Iraq. Such contracts pay contractors a profit as a percentage of whatever the project costs. ....

........... "I will tell you that anyone who has come over and spent time talking to the troops and comes home and says, 'They all think what we're doing is great and we need to stay here as long as it takes,' are not honestly talking to the troops," McCaskill says. "There are many of them at this point, especially those, I found, that have been deployed for the second or third time, that are very discouraged and do not believe that we are making meaningful progress in terms of what we're trying to accomplish over here." ..........