By tracking down and stopping waste and fraud in Pentagon contracts related to the war in Iraq, the government's Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has saved taxpayers more than $1.2 billion.
But U.S. dollars will be spent to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure for many years to come - and crooked contractors won't have to worry about SIGIR for much longer. The agency is scheduled to be shut down in under a year, follwing decisions taken last year.
That schedule is, in a word, stupid. It may allow hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars in American money to be wasted in Iraq.
Congress should revise the timetable to keep SIGIR on the job as long as its services are needed.