Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi Politician Who Helped Persuade U.S. to Invade, Dies at 71
The cause was heart failure, Iraqi officials said.
Mr. Chalabi is the Iraqi perhaps most associated with President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and topple its longtime dictator, Saddam Hussein. A mathematician with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Mr. Chalabi, the son of a prominent Shiite family, cultivated close ties with journalists in Washington and London; the neoconservative advisers who helped shape Mr. Bush’s foreign policy; American lawmakers; and a wide network of Iraqi exiles, many of whom were paid for intelligence about Mr. Hussein’s government.
His group, the Iraqi National Congress, would get more than $100 million from the C.I.A. and other agencies from its founding in 1992 to the start of the war. He cultivated close friendships with a circle of hawkish Republicans — Dick Cheney, Douglas J. Feith, William J. Luti, Richard N. Perle and Paul D. Wolfowitz — who were central participants in the United States’ march to war, Mr. Cheney as vice president and the others as top Pentagon officials.
Mr. Chalabi’s contention, broadly shared by United States intelligence agencies, was that Mr. Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Hussein had fatally gassed Kurds and slaughtered Shiites and other Iraqis, and he had refused to fully cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors. But most of the case for war was predicated on faulty intelligence, including the testimony of defectors. As it became clear that Iraq did not have an active chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program and as the occupying American forces did not receive the welcome that the Iraqi opposition had predicted, the Bush administration distanced itself from him.
The cause was heart failure, Iraqi officials said.
Mr. Chalabi is the Iraqi perhaps most associated with President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and topple its longtime dictator, Saddam Hussein. A mathematician with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Mr. Chalabi, the son of a prominent Shiite family, cultivated close ties with journalists in Washington and London; the neoconservative advisers who helped shape Mr. Bush’s foreign policy; American lawmakers; and a wide network of Iraqi exiles, many of whom were paid for intelligence about Mr. Hussein’s government.
His group, the Iraqi National Congress, would get more than $100 million from the C.I.A. and other agencies from its founding in 1992 to the start of the war. He cultivated close friendships with a circle of hawkish Republicans — Dick Cheney, Douglas J. Feith, William J. Luti, Richard N. Perle and Paul D. Wolfowitz — who were central participants in the United States’ march to war, Mr. Cheney as vice president and the others as top Pentagon officials.
Mr. Chalabi’s contention, broadly shared by United States intelligence agencies, was that Mr. Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Hussein had fatally gassed Kurds and slaughtered Shiites and other Iraqis, and he had refused to fully cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors. But most of the case for war was predicated on faulty intelligence, including the testimony of defectors. As it became clear that Iraq did not have an active chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program and as the occupying American forces did not receive the welcome that the Iraqi opposition had predicted, the Bush administration distanced itself from him.
