CIA shifts survey focus

Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime’s capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials. The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the US had not invaded the country last year, the officials said.

The new direction of the inquiry is seen by some officials as an attempt to obscure the fact that no banned weapons — or even evidence of active programs — have been found, and instead emphasize theories that Iraq may have been planning to revive its programs.

Such an effort would be a significant departure for the Iraq Survey Group whose primary mission when it was established last year was to locate and destroy stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that the CIA and other agencies believed were hidden across Iraq.

The failure to find stockpiles of banned weapons has been a source of embarrassment to the CIA, as well as to the Bush administration, which made ridding Hussein of illicit arms the main rationale for a preemptive war against Iraq.

For that reason, some officials familiar with the CIA’s plans for the final report said they thought it was politically motivated and designed to focus the public’s attention on hypothetical future threats. (LA Times)

Army to withhold payment to Halliburton

The US Army has decided to withhold 15 percent of future payments to Halliburton because the company apparently billed taxpayers for work that was never undertaken or completed, Reuters reports. Halliburton had said Aug. 16 that the Army would give it more time to explain the suspicious bills.

The Pentagon last week told Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary that $1.8 billion in bills from the company’s work in the Middle East are not verifiable. The $1.8 billion represents 43 percent of Halliburton’s total bills submitted to the Pentagon for reimbursement. The company was given until Aug. 15 to justify those bills, but failed to meet that deadline. It also failed to meet two previous deadlines that had been extended, Reuters reported.

Halliburton will take legal action against the Pentagon over the dispute. The company wants a judge to rule that the 15 percent withholding does not apply to its LOGCAP and Restore Iraqi Oil I and II contracts with the Army, which constitute the bulk of its work in the Middle East. (HalliburtonWatch.org)

Haiti jury acquits ex-paramilitary leader

A jury acquitted former paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain of murder charges Aug. 17 after a secretive trial in the middle of the night, angering human rights groups who blamed the country’s US-backed government.

Chamblain and co-defendant Jackson Joanis were acquitted just after dawn for the 1993 murder of Antoine Izmery, a former justice minister and financier of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to Stanley Gaston, an attorney for Chamblain. Both defendants still face further murder trials: Chamblain for several killings in a pro-Aristide stronghold of northern Gonaives in 1994, and Joanis for the killing of a pro-Aristide priest, Rev. Jean-Marie Vincent, the same year.

Chamblain led a paramilitary group blamed for killing some 3,000 people from 1991 — when Aristide was first ousted — to 1994 — when Aristide was restored by US troops. Chamblain went into exile in the Dominican Republic at the time.

Chamblain was convicted in absentia in 1995 and given two life sentences for his alleged role in the Izmery assassination and the 1994 Gonaives killings. Haitian law provides that people judged in their absence have a right to a new trial if they return. (AP)

Guatemala to pay paramilitaries

Guatemala says it will pay at least $420 million to paramilitaries who battled rebels during the country’s civil war. The former fighters, who activists say are responsible for war crimes, had threatened to paralyze the country if Congress did not approve the payments. The paramilitaries have been demanding compensation since they were disbanded in 1996 at the end of the Central American state’s civil war.

Human rights activists say the former paramilitaries were behind some of the country’s worst war crimes, including massacres, rapes and tortures. More than 200,000 people disappeared or were killed during the 36-year civil war. (BBC)

Anti-depressants kill 500 people a year

Almost 5,000 people have died in a decade from poisoning related to antidepressant drugs, figures showed Aug. 19. The British Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that between 1993 and 2002 there were 4,767 deaths in England and Wales involving antidepressant overdoses. Around 80 percent of these deaths were recorded as suicides, according to figures published in Health Statistics Quarterly.

Prescriptions for antidepressants have risen rapidly in recent years. In 1993 there were 10.8 million antidepressant prescriptions handed out by doctors in England and Wales. But by 2002, this figure had more than doubled to 26.3 million prescriptions.

Over the same period, deaths from antidepressant poisoning fluctuated, peaking at 540 deaths in 1996, after which deaths started to fall. This drop came as the older type of drugs, known as tricyclic antidepressants, were increasingly replaced by the newer selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Research has shown that tricyclic drugs are more toxic in overdose, with two (dothiepin and amitriptyline) accounting for 75 percent of antidepressant-related poisoning deaths. (Independent (UK))

N. Korea reject new talks with US

North Korea described President Bush as an “imbecile” and a “tyrant” who was worse than Adolf Hitler, and ruled out attending new talks on nuclear weapons with the US. In an unusually strong attack, a foreign ministry spokesman slammed Bush for calling North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il a tyrant while campaigning in Wisconsin.

The spokesperson said that following Bush’s comments, North Korea could not attend working-level discussions aimed at paving the way for a new round of ministerial negotiations on the nuclear issue. The talks bring together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US.

North Korea’s angry response came on Aug. 12 as US and South Korean troops began 12 days of annual military exercises to test their response to a possible invasion by North Korea. The North insists the exercise is part of Washington’s war preparations to topple the Stalinist regime. The operation, called Ulchi Focus Lens, involves over 14,500 US troops.

North Korea rejected the proposals and said it wanted aid and guarantees before it went ahead with freezing its nuclear programs. The stand-off over the North’s quest for nuclear weapons erupted in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of operating a secret nuclear program based on enriched uranium in violation of a 1994 freeze of its separate plutonium producing program. (AFP)

Ex-US banker to become Pakistan premier

Plucked from Citibank in New York to become finance minister after a 1999 military coup in Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz is just days away from becoming the 23rd prime minister of the turbulent South Asian nation. The former banker, 55, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt that killed his driver and eight others as he campaigned for a seat in the lower house of parliament on July 30.

Undeterred, Aziz won his seat on Aug. 18 by a big margin, clearing the way for him to become prime minister this week. He is expected to have a more hands-on role as prime minister than his predecessor, Zafarullah Khan Jamali, especially when it comes to running the economy.

Aziz, a multi-millionaire who is one of the richest members of the government, was persuaded to take over the Finance Ministry after military dictator Pervez Musharraf came to power in a coup. At the end of this year, for the first time, Pakistan will have successfully completed two International Monetary Fund programs after several aborted efforts in the 1990s.

Aziz has undoubtedly been helped by debt forgiveness by the West in return for Pakistan’s support for the US-led war in Afghanistan since 2001, and the inflow of billions of dollars from expatriate Pakistanis after stricter banking rules aimed at catching terror financing made it difficult to move money through unofficial channels. (Reuters)