Chris Murphy: “It goes to the very subject that we opened with in talking about here, which is the war itself, and we believe that…”

“It goes to the very subject that we opened with in talking about here, which is the war itself, and we believe that there is a much better way to spend pretty much all of that money, whether it be rebuilding our schools, educating kids, giving health care to children. But even, even given the vast amount of money that we are spending over there, there has been virtually no check, virtually no oversight by this Congress and this administration. A great example is the Government Oversight Committee, which has done really yeoman's work in trying to make up for the complete absence of oversight during the past several Congresses. The Oversight Committee held a hearing, very well attended, very highly publicized hearing a few weeks back with the CEO of Blackwater, who came before Congress, Blackwater, the private security firm which has basically created a privatized military in Iraq today. Blackwater came before us, the CEO of Blackwater came before us the other week, and we asked him simply this. We said, tell us how much profit you are making. Tell us how much profit Blackwater is making off of U.S. Government contracts and said, You know what? It's none of your business. I can give you an estimation. I think we are making about $85 million a year in profits off of $850 million in contracts. But, basically, it's none of your business, United States Congress.”