Even as the U.S. military’s central command is cataloging Iraq’s slide into chaos, the Republican lawyer in charge of ensuring that billions of tax dollars are properly spent there learned his job had been quietly terminated. Sens. Susan Collins and Dianne Feinstein immediately announced plans to reinstate that position. The nation would save many times over what that office costs if they are successful.

Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen, appointed by the president, began work in January 2004. He has 55 auditors and inspectors in Iraq, and has produced about 300 reports on companies such as Bechtel, Parsons and Halliburton. Sometimes those reports have embarrassed the White House, leading some to speculate that the provision ending his term next year inserted in the Defense authorization bill was at the executive branch’s direction.

It’s a bad idea no matter what its origin. The monetary cost of the war becomes more important by the month, as projects are found to have been left uncompleted or completed in a slipshod way and as the increased fighting in Iraq makes it easier to leave billions of dollars in projects unexamined. The response that the Pentagon’s acting inspector general can handle the Iraqi work was refuted last month, according to news reports, when it was revealed in House testimony that the office had no agents in Iraq.

Further, the office of the special inspector general has clarified crucial issues such as reconstruction funding from oil sales. Last spring, for in-stance, Mr. Bowen reviewed for a House committee assumptions going into the war, including that oil and gas revenues would fund reconstruction, that foreign investment would aid in the development of additional oil and gas fields and that this development would be unimpeded by hostile forces.

“To varying degrees,” he said, “each of these assumptions has proved to be incorrect.”

The termination of Mr. Bowen’s position by Oct. 1 of next year would mean that his office would begin wrapping up its work by the end of this calendar year. According to Sen. Collins, Mr. Bowen’s office “has proven to be a much-needed watchdog auditing reconstruction contracts in Iraq and spotlighting numerous cases of waste, fraud and abuse” and the special inspector general himself “has been an aggressive, independent leader.”

The bill has the support of Armed Services Chairman John Warner and would quickly move through the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where Sen. Collins is chairman. It needs a companion bill in the House, which might be more difficult, but Americans deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent for Iraqi reconstruction and especially when they are being misspent.