BAGHDAD — Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi politician who became a Pentagon favorite when he helped persuade the George W. 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. He was 71.
Iraqi state TV said he died in Baghdad but did not provide further details.
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.
However, he had a falling out with the Pentagon after the invasion and was largely sidelined by other Iraqi leaders, many with close ties to neighboring Iran. Chalabi had most recently been serving as the chairman of parliament’s finance committee and was previously a deputy prime minister.
To his supporters in Iraq, Chalabi was a campaigner for democracy who deserves credit for Hussein’s removal.
“It is a very bad day for Iraq,” said Shiite lawmaker Muwaffak al-Rubai.
But Robert Baer, a former CIA officer who met with Chalabi repeatedly in the mid-1990s and in the lead-up to the 2003 war, called him a “con man” who was able to manipulate American politicians.
Chalabi, the scion of a wealthy Baghdad family, fled Iraq as a teenager when the monarchy was overthrown. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 and went on to get a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Chicago.
He became a leading figure in Iraq’s exiled opposition in the 1990s and cultivated close ties with the future Vice President Dick Cheney and Washington’s so-called neo-conservatives, who favored a more muscular U.S. policy in the Middle East.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Chalabi played a key role in convincing the administration that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda, unfounded claims at the heart of the case for war.
