Frauds R US

The final version of the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan was quitly stripped of provisions that the US Senate had passed to penalize war profiteers who defraud American taxpayers.

Republican and Democratic Senate conferees consistently supported the provision, which had been unanimously accepted during Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the bill.

"Congress is about to send billions and billions of dollars to a place where there is no functioning government, under a plan with too little accountability and too few financial controls," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), one of the bill's authors. "That's a formula for mischief. We need strong disincentives for those who would defraud taxpayers, and removing this protection is another major blot on this bill."

A co-author, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), agreed: "I fail to understand how anyone can be opposed to prosecuting those who want to defraud and overcharge the United States government and the American taxpayers."

U.S. fraud statutes protect against waste of tax dollars at home, but none expressly prohibit war profiteering and none expressly confer extraterritorial jurisdiction overseas.