Price fighting for war bill items

bniolet — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:06:00 -0400

U.S. Rep. David Price is working behind the scenes this week to keep provisions he wrote in the war supplemental bill being debated by Congress.

Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, has long ticked away at regulations on private security contractors working in President Bush’s war on terror, Barb Barrett reports.

Among those is a provision that would bring contractors working for non-military agencies inside war zones under the U.S. judicial code.

That would, for example, have meant a judicial investigation into the Blackwater guards accused of killing civilians last fall while working for the U.S. Department of State.

Price’s language, along with money to pay for FBI investigators in Iraq, was in the House version of the war spending bill. But it was stripped out of the final Senate version along with several other policy provisions.

Contractors working for the military already are under the military judicial code for crimes committed in war zones.

The House could take up the war spending bill as soon as this week. The bill is meant to provide emergency funding for the war in Iraq. Bush has threatened to veto any bill that goes beyond dollars for the troops, but Congress has tried to include in it several new policy provisions.

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Price fighting for war bill items