Global Security Newswire

Former key CIA informant and Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi said last week that concerns about weapons of mass destruction were a minor issue in the buildup to the 2003 invasion of the Middle Eastern nation, the Atlantic magazine reported (see GSN, Sept. 23).

"The weapons of mass destruction was to our view a marginal issue," said Chalabi, who served for a short time as the president of the Governing Council of Iraq following the invasion (see GSN, Nov. 10, 2005).

"Getting rid of Saddam [Hussein] was certainly justified," Chalabi said Friday during an event in Washington. "We were concerned about Saddam's oppression."

The Iraqi politician has been broadly criticized for supplying the U.S. intelligence community with inaccurate information about prewar Iraq's WMD capabilities and about links between Hussein's regime and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Washington has since admitted the Hussein regime had no part in the Sept. 11 attacks, and no operational WMD stockpiles or programs were discovered in Iraq following the invasion.

Given the opportunity to discuss his views on controversial Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chalabi said, "I don't think he's a crazy person. I think he's a smart man" (Max Fisher, Atlantic, Oct. 1).