AP: Ahmad Chalabi, Leading Voice Behind 2003 Invasion, Dies of Heart Attack

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

Iraq state TV: Ahmad Chalabi, leading voice behind 2003 invasion, dies of heart attack

By the Associated Press | November 3, 2015 | 3:25 AM EST
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq state TV: Ahmad Chalabi, leading voice behind 2003 invasion, dies of heart attack.

Read more: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/iraq-state-tv-ahmad-chalabi-leading-voice-behind-2003-invasion-dies-heart-attack

---

Just a reminder: He wasn't a "leading voice." He was a liar, warmonger and fraud.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/06/07/the-manipulator

[Demeter]

1. Only 10 years too late for his country (and ours)

Such a pity

[Betty Karlson]

2. He was a corporate shill.

I know the Romans said "de mortuis nihil nisi bene" but on this occasion I am struggling even to say nothing.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. Welcome to the afterlife, Ahmad.

Hope you enjoy your next incarnation. I'm sure it will be interesting to see the world from a roach's point of view.

[Live and Learn]

4. What a terrible legacy to leave. nt

[Botany]

5. A conman's conman

He had to escape Jordan in the trunk of a car after stealing the funds
deposited into the bank he set up and knowing this the neo-cons sold
America that he was gonna be the new Iraq's George Washington. Chalibi
was more then happy to tell of WMDs and how we were gonna be welcomed
as liberators in Iraq.

[Turbineguy]

6. Luckily the Neocons

had plenty of our money to pay for his con.

May you have an unpleasant eternity, Mr. Chalabi.

[Botany]

7. From the New Yorker link in the O.P.

<Between 1992 and the raid on Chalabi’s home, the U.S. government funneled more than a hundred million dollars to the Iraqi National Congress. The current Bush Administration gave Chalabi’s group at least thirty-nine million dollars. Exactly what the I.N.C. provided in exchange for these sums has yet to be fully explained. Chalabi defined his role simply. “I clarified the picture,” he said. His many critics, however, believe that he distorted it. Diplomatic and intelligence officials accuse him of exaggerating the security threat that Iraq posed to the U.S.; supplying defectors who offered misleading or bogus testimony about Saddam’s efforts to acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons; promoting questionable stories connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda; and overestimating the ease with which Saddam could be replaced with a Western-style democracy.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former C.I.A. counter-terrorism specialist who now consults for the government, told me, “With Chalabi, we paid to fool ourselves. It’s horrible. In other times, it might be funny. But a lot of people are dead as a result of this. It’s reprehensible.”>

now how many investigations did they do into Benghazi?

The neocons had to know that Chalibi was under a 20 year sentence for bank fraud and embezzlement
in Jordan but they were more then happy to pay and use him for their Iraq war which has now morphed
into ISIS.

[Scarsdale]

11. Funeral

Will his close friends W and Cheney attend the funeral? He did them a big favor, lying for them to enrich them all.

[brush]

17. Don't think those two dare leave the country

Irony of all ironies, they're afraid of being victims of their own cruel tactics — extraodinary rendition.

It's a good bet that if it becomes known of their whereabouts outside of the U.S., they could very well be hustled off to the Hague to be put on trial for their war crimes.

[msanthrope]

8. Let's hope Judith Miller and Dick Cheney make a trifecta. nt

[Botany]

9. Doug Feith can join those 2 ASAP

He used Chalabi to help the pentagon's "office of special plans" to
sell the Iraq war w/lies about WMDs and how we would be welcomed
as liberators.


********

Thom Hartman

[Fuddnik]

12. Feith is too stoopid to croak.

[Botany]

13. Feith is not dumb, a lying no good neocon shit yes but stupid he is not.

From Wiki:

Feith grew up in Elkins Park, part of Cheltenham Township, a Philadelphia suburb. He attended Philadelphia's Central High School, and later attended Harvard University, where he obtained his undergraduate degree and graduated magna cum laude in 1975. He continued on to the Georgetown University Law Center, receiving his J.D. magna cum laude in 1978.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_J._Feith

[YoungDemCA]

21. Academics can be quite brilliant at what they do, but some of them really don't understand the world

Or, they just don't care, because they are blinded by their own myopic ideologies.

Case in point: Douglas Feith.

[BlueMTexpat]

10. He was also an out-and-out crook.

Honest bankers will tell you they’re in a get-rich-slow business, that any rapidly growing bank is headed for trouble. That conventional wisdom was proved correct by the record of the Ahmed Chalabi-run Petra Bank.

Chalabi has always insisted Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the bank’s demise, and while that claim has never held water, the details of Petra’s collapse have always been murky. But a look at documents collected by auditors from an Arthur Andersen branch in Geneva sheds some light on where the missing money went. The audit found that 40 percent of the bank’s loans and commitments were “non-performing,” or not paid back. Part of the problem was what the accountants call “related-party transactions,” in which a bank lends money to its owners, their companies, their relatives or their business partners. Fourteen percent of the bank’s assets, or about $130 million before the Jordanian devaluation, were dubious loans to, or commitments from, “related parties” — meaning members of the Chalabi family network, who had a high rate of default on them.

According to a Jordanian official involved in handling the Petra affair, after Petra’s closure in 1989, the Jordanian government had to put up some $300 million to guarantee depositors’ money — a staggering blow to the oil-poor country. The total cost to the economy is estimated at $500 million. “We’re still feeling the effects of the Petra collapse in many ways,” says Mohammed Alayyan, a publisher in the capital of Amman.

Chalabi was tried and convicted in absentia on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation, and sentenced by a Jordanian court to 22 years in jail. Despite Chalabi’s claims, it’s clear the Petra Bank fraud was one crime that Saddam Hussein didn’t commit.

http://www.salon.com/2004/05/04/petra/

He fit right in with the warmongering criminals Bush, Cheney, et al. I hope that he's saving some space for them in Hell.

[hatrack]

14. Oh no! What a devastating loss to the Jeb! foreign policy team!

Who will he turn to now?

[Vogon_Glory]

15. BURN IN HELL FOREVER, AHMED CHALABI!!!

I rarely post my most vicious thoughts on-line, but for this guy I'll make an exception. This SOB was instrumental in setting off a disastrous war that killed thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and wrecked the lives of tens of thousands of American lives and millions of Iraqis' lives, too. His evil counsel led to one of the greatest foreign policy disasters of the last 100 years and led to the rise of a particularly vicious, malignant war of religion that is blighting the Middle East and elsewhere right to this moment.

Woe to the people who listened to this villain's lying words and used it to send our kids in harms way!!!

[Rose Siding]

16. Can't wait for the NYT in depth obit piece

[Jack Rabbit]

18. "Just a reminder: He wasn't a "leading voice." He was a liar, warmonger and fraud"

Just a reminder: Liar, warmonger and fraud also describe the Frat Boy, the Big Dick, the Rumbler and many other Bush Junta figures. So how does being any or all of those things exclude one from being a "leading voice" for the invasion of Iraq. It was a prerequisite.

[Solly Mack]

19. POS dies. Boo-fucking-hoo.

[olddots]

20. something to be happy about

[Eugene]

22. I know I shouldn't, but...

Good ****ing riddance.
Alas, 13 years late.

[Javaman]

23. If you have nothing good to say about someone...

say it anyway. that man was a bastard and should have been in tried on war crimes along with george w. moron*

[McKim]

24. The Comments Give Me Hope

I am thankful to those who commented and told the truth about Chalabi. It warms my heart to know that many many people know what really happened to start this disastrous war. Keep talking, brothers and sisters.

[tabasco]

25. Sorry fucker

This was his guys staging this phony celebration that the corrupt U.S. mass media made look like the entire population of Baghdad was there.

[DinahMoeHum]

26. Oh. OK.

n/t

[Monk06]

27. Jordanian intelligence figured he was an Iranian double agent. Sounds about right