Ever since military suppliers gouged the nascent American government on gunpowder and uniforms during the Revolutionary War, this nation has had an uncomfortable relationship with businessmen who profit excessively from conflict. We're proudly a nation of entrepreneurs, but if we've learned anything it is that free enterprise becomes awfully expensive to taxpayers when it is allowed to take undue advantage of the public largesse during wartime.

That was true during the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and both world wars of the 20th century. It is also true today with the war in Iraq -- the no-bid, cost-plus contracts of Halliburton Corp., formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, being one example.

The Los Angeles Times recently opened a window on a new type of war profiteer: the insiders who served as public advocates for the Middle East invasion and who are now making money by guiding others to the burgeoning "business opportunities" in rebuilding postwar Iraq and in homeland security.

One prominent example cited by the Times is R. James Woolsey, the ubiquitous CNN commentator who served as CIA director from 1993 to 1995 and now works for two firms that do business in Iraq and has an interest in another that provides security and anti-terrorism services.

Mr. Woolsey, the Times says, "is part of a small group that shows with unusual clarity the interlocking nature of the way the insider system can work. Moving in the same social circles, often sitting together on government panels and working with like-minded think tanks and advocacy groups, they wrote letters to the White House urging military action in Iraq, formed organizations that pressed for invasion and pushed legislation that authorized aid to exile groups."

Since federal conflict-of-interest laws don't apply to former officials or informal advisers, this sort of activity is perfectly legal. That it works to blur the distinction between public and private interests does not seem to matter much to those in charge in Washington today.

Unlike the well-known Mr. Woolsey, many who practice this new trade do so in relative anonymity. They include people like Randy Scheunemann, former adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who helped draft legislation that funneled $98 million in tax dollars to Iraqi exile groups -- the same folks who later provided misleading information used to justify the U.S. invasion.

Mr. Scheunemann, the founding president of a group called the Committee for Liberation of Iraq, now advises former Soviet bloc states, the Times says, on getting reconstruction business in Iraq. As we know, much of that reconstruction will be financed directly by U.S. taxpayers.

There is little doubt that routing a tyrant, building a democracy and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction make more saleable rallying cries for war than, say, "making money for my friends." But the American people have every right to ask how much of the Iraq adventure can be ascribed to altruism and how much to the profit motive.Kirk Walters/The Blade, Toledo