The End of Ahmed Chalabi

Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician who played a role in persuading the US to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, has died of a heart attack, according to state television.

[...]

Living in exile as head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which opposed Saddam Hussein, Chalabi became a White House favourite after he provided information that supported the US justification for invading Iraq in 2003.

But he lost favour after the invasion when much of his informatioHe was also accused of providing information to Iran. Iraqi police and US forces raided his home in May 2004 and seized documents and computers, but the only formal charge Chalabi faced was putting forged banknotes into circulation after the raid turned up a small number in his home.

Chalabi was also dogged by allegations of corruption and was convicted by a Jordanian court of embezzling funds from the collapsed Petra bank in 1992, a case he claimed was politically motivated.

n regarding Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida turned out to be false.

[...]

Following the invasion, Chalabi, a secular Shia Muslim, was one of the main proponents of the “de-Baathification” drive to remove alleged Saddam supporters from public life, which alienated Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority and fuelled the revolt against US-led occupation forces.

[...]

Key figures in US president George W Bush’s administration hoped Chalabi and the INC might take over Iraq as an interim government after the fall of Saddam.

But because of spending many years outside Iraq, his group was little-known and little-liked at home. Plans for a smooth political transition fell apart, and instead Iraq was plagued by years of bloodshed.

  Guardian

Was?