A federal audit published Sunday exposed the State Department for withholding important financial and scheduling information about construction in Iraq from Congress.

It's time for the department to come clean and publish the true information

The agency in charge of reconstruction finances in Iraq, the United States Agency for International Development, or A.I.D., labeled millions of dollars as overhead or administrative costs.

Although the audit did not report on all of AID's $1.4 billion financial decisions, it did give a few select examples, including the construction of a children's hospital in Basra, Iraq.

The project's contractor, Bechtel, told the auditors that the hospital, originally estimated to cost approximately $50 million, was more likely going to end up costing at least $98 million. The report said the cost could even be as high as $164 million, although Congress was made aware of only the $50 million in a report.

Although it's likely that Bechtel's actions were in response to pressure from superiors, this is no excuse for withholding information.

Now that this information has been made public, it's time for AID to publish another report with the correct information, including the updated hospital charges and any projects under its supervision.

The American people deserve to know how our money is being spent and this is a blatant disregard of that principle. Withholding the correct costs of projects in Iraq just makes the details surrounding this war even murkier.

By withholding this information, AID made it appear as though they were spending far less than they actually were.

Standard project overhead usually runs up to about 30 percent of the estimated cost. However, AID had a project overhead of 418 percent. Numbers this high are simply unacceptable, especially when total costs amount to $1.4 billion.

The State Department said they planned on dropping Bechtel as a contractor in Iraq, a decision that should have been made months ago.

However, their work is not done until an apology and a new and actually accurate report are presented to Congress.