The Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee held a hearing yesterday on defense contracting. It turns out that at least one contractor in Iraq - one receiving hundreds of billions of dollars from the government - is slightly less than "cost effective." [Sen. Byron] Dorgan said a lower-level employee of KBR, which has received hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts for services in Iraq, told him that he had been ordered to put the company's logo on towels being furnished to troops, even though it could triple the cost. The unnamed employee said he was told the price did not matter because "it was a cost-plus contract," Dorgan said, waving a white towel embossed with a large KBR emblem. That should chap your hide - well, not so much if you're a KBR shareholder. But, as much as one might be a staunch believer in the power of privatization, one should be suspicious of the conduct of contractors operating without proper oversight and transparency - oversight and transparency that the Webb-McCaskill commission will attempt to bring to bear on wartime contracting. And oddly, President Bush hopes to quash the commission before it begins it work.