Veteran Iraqi political operative Ahmad Chalabi, who forcefully and misleadingly advocated for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, died of a heart attack in Baghdad, Iraqi state TV reported on Tuesday. He was 71. After decades in exile from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Chalabi passed information to neoconservative friends and allies in the George W. Bush administration indicating that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He was paid millions by the CIA, The New York Times notes, but the Bush administration cut most ties with him when it turned out most of his information was made up, or at the very least manipulated.
Chalabi came from a prominent Shiite family and earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago. Without U.S. support, he never rose to the highest ranks of power in Iraq, as he had sought to do. He was deputy prime minister for awhile, and chairman of the Iraqi parliament's finance committee when he died. Sheik Humam Hamoudi, the first deputy speaker of parliament, called Chalabi's death a "big loss," and fellow Shiite lawmaker Muwaffak al-Rubaie told The Associated Press that "it is a very bad day for Iraq," calling Chalabi "one of the most seasoned and pioneering politicians" in the country who had "worked for a democratic, liberal Iraq.... I am glad he died peacefully."
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