House Rebukes State Department On Iraq Corruption

October 16, 2007 -- "If the government in Iraq is so corrupt that our State Department won’t even tell us about it…if it’s so corrupt that it is undermining any chance of political progress, then how can we ask our brave men and women to risk their lives there? We are putting them in an impossible situation."

Today the House overwhelming passed the Iraq corruption resolution, H.Res. 734, which condemns the State Department for withholding information about Iraqi corruption from the Congress and the American people. The strongly worded rebuke passed by a vote of 395-21.

Article continues below...

H.Res. 734 expresses the sense of the House that the State Department has abused its classification authority by withholding from Congress and the American people information about the extent of corruption in the Maliki government. The resolution further condemns the State Department for retroactively classifying documents that had been widely distributed previously as unclassified, and by directing its employees not to answer questions in an open forum.

Full Text of H.Res. 734

Fact Sheet on H.Res. 734

Source: House Oversight Committee