WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- During America's four-year war against Hitler and the Emperor of Japan, Senator Harry S. Truman established the "Select Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program," also known as the �Truman Committee.� The committee investigated a plethora of military contractors who were gouging the taxpayers. It held 432 public hearings and 300 executive sessions, conducted hundreds of fact-finding missions, issued 51 reports and saved the taxpayers billions of dollars. The Truman Committee was authorized by a Democratic Congress to examine the conduct of a Democratic administration. It's sole task was to investigate military contractors.

In contrast, today's Republican Congress has held only a handful of official hearings into contractor abuse and fraud in Iraq. The House Committee on Government Reform has held only four full committee hearings into the matter since the war began while the Senate has held only one hearing. In other words, Congress has delegated nearly all of its oversight responsibilities required by the Constitution to officials at the Pentagon even though military auditors discovered $8.8 billion in taxpayer funds went missing in Iraq while another $12 billion in cash was disbursed without any record of how it was spent.

HalliburtonWatch has found four separate occasions where the U.S. Congress has voted down a proposal to establish an investigative committee on Iraq modeled after the Truman Committee. This committee's sole purpose would have been to investigate military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.