Another news-cycle episode in the never-ending horror-subject of Iraq came with the death announced yesterday of Ahmed Chalabi, the grifter who played the US public for the 2003 invasion.

Media coverage on Chalabi dying has mostly painted him as the guy who ‘pushed‘ America into the Iraqi war, though, in reality he was just a most-convenient poster boy for George W and The Dick’s nightmare fantasy.
And real-life/real-time crimes against humanity.

The Iraqi war lies deep with George W and his boys, and certaintly not just one asshole.
Ben Norton at Salon this morning has a good read on the affair and the attempt to use Chalabi as a fall guy.
Underlying points:

The answer to this question, of course, is that Chalabi did not convince the U.S. to invade Iraq.
The Bush administration already planned to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and used Chalabi, as a Western-educated Iraqi who spoke in the language of democracy and freedom, to sell its invasion to the public.
Contrary to the insistence of much of the media, Chalabi was decidedly not an architect; rather, he was a collaborator.
…
The U.S. government used Chalabi in order to legitimize its war — not the other way around.
By blaming him for the Iraq War — one of the most influential events of the 21st century, and one of its worst crimes — the media is helping the Bush administration exculpate itself.
In doing so, the press is letting the neocons off the hook.
The undeniable reality is that it is the U.S. government that is responsible for the catastrophe in Iraq today — for the deaths of over one million people, for the destabilization of the region, and for the spread of sectarian extremism — not a lone Iraqi dissident.

As Norton also points out in his story, when George W was elected president in 2000, he sucked-along a shitload of assholes from the crazed-right, so-called ‘think tank,’ Project for the New American Century, which included the linchpin of Saddam’s removal for all planning purposes, and such.
Worse even, and to emphasize the Iraqi obsession, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said the take-out of Hussein started on ‘day one’ of the Bush administration — heart and soul of that White House.
Via the Guardian from January 2004: ‘As Mr O’Neill, who sat in countless national security council meetings, describes the mood: “It was all about finding a way to do it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this.'”‘
Up tops a lying asshole, who fit right into the findings.

As for Mr. Chalabi, and the grifting life (via The Economist):

And even his friends joked about his reputation for untrustworthiness.
At a signing ceremony for Iraq’s post-Saddam foundational law in 2004, a fellow councillor and future president, Jalal Talabani, was overheard chiding Mr Chalabi, “Ahmed, leave the pen.”

Sad the culprit-creators for such a horrific event like Iraq will never see the inside of a jail cell…

(Illustration above found here).