Key U.S. Senate committee wants answers to Iraq investment in own reconstruction …

The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee wants U.S. auditors to investigate the Iraqi government's spending on reconstruction as both U.S. and Iraqi funds in the rebuilding effort came under fire on Capitol Hill this week, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

"How much has Iraq and the United States, respectively, spent annually during that time period on training, equipping and supporting Iraqi security forces, and on Iraq reconstruction, governance, and economic development?" Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and member John Warner, R-Va., wrote Friday to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. "We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks."