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kpete

(71,994 posts) Tue Nov 3, 2015, 10:15 AM Nov 2015

Ahmed Chalabi, Iraqi exile who helped spur U.S. invasion, dies of heart attack

IRBIL, Iraq — Ahmed Chalabi, a well-connected Iraqi exile whose false claims about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal helped spur the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, has died of a heart attack, Iraqi state media said Tuesday.

He was found dead in his home in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Tuesday, according to Ali Yaseen, his driver. Chalabi was 71.

Chalabi’s political fortunes were closely linked to the war — and the years of bloodshed and unrest that followed — that many claim he helped spark as a trusted and well-paid adviser to American political and military decision makers.

He became synonymous with the spotty — and sometimes wrong — intelligence used to bolster assertions by President George W. Bush and others that the Iraqi leader possessed weapons of mass destruction.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ahmed-chalabi-iraqi-politician-who-pushed-for-us-invasion-dies-of-heart-attack/2015/11/03/07bd3a99-cd43-4f45-ab0f-5d37c9c6bbb5_story.html

Here's how a former CIA analyst described the closed loop between Miller, Chalabi and the Bush White House, in a James Moore piece in Salon:

"Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives with Iraq, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated by some insider she always describes as a 'senior administration official.' She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/07/01/how-the-iraq-war-still-haunts-new-york-times/199946