Ahmad Chalabi, 71, a prominent Iraqi politician who became a Pentagon favorite when he helped persuade the Bush administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003 by pushing false allegations of weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda, died Tuesday of a heart attack.
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It was after Chalabi escaped prison in Jordan in 1989 by fleeing across the border in the trunk of a vehicle that his real political career began.
While the CIA had funded the operation to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, leading agency personnel concluded that Chalabi’s revolt had been largely a sham, which he and his closest aides used to line their own pockets.
Haitham al-Jabouri, secretary of parliament’s financial panel that Chalabi had chaired, said attendants had found him dead in his bed in his Baghdad home. In 1998, he helped persuade Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed by President Bill Clinton and declared it was the policy of the U.S.to replace Saddam Hussein’s government with a democratic one.
Born in October 1944 to a wealthy Baghdad family, Chalabi left the country in 1956 and spent most of his life in Britain and the United States, where he received a doctorate in mathematics. Chalabi himself would not return to Baghdad until 45 years later, brought back in the hold of a USA military transport plane. James Inhofe, a former ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who voted in support of the Iraq War resolution.
Chalabi, a secular Shiite politician who lived in exile for decades, was a leading proponent of the invasion and had close ties to many in the Bush administration, who viewed him as a favorite to lead Iraq. His fellow students included former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and Oil Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.
“Everyone was against him and accused him of being an agent, but they all secretly approached him and sought for him to be their bridge to the Americans”, said Alusi. “I don’t think you can blame one person, but it happened”. He was among the advocates of currying favor with Sunni forces in order to defuse the insurgency, a policy opposed by Chalabi and his “de-Baathification” apparatus, whose actions fueled the savage sectarian war that led to the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who was not in Congress during the Iraq War vote, said the invasion would’ve happened regardless of Chalabi’s role.
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“Ahmad was wonderful for the Bush administration because he wanted America to believe exactly what the White House wanted to believe”, he said. “But it’s hard to know what different lawmakers were thinking. Everyone was afraid of terrorists”.
