Chalabi and Miami

I've just finished Jane Mayer's looong New Yorker article on Ahmad Chalabi, "The Manipulator," about which more later.

This paragraph, in particular, struck me as a reminder that Chalabi is hardly the first of his kind to have such an influence on American foreign policy:

Ahmad Chalabi was born on October 30, 1944, into one of Iraq’s wealthiest and most influential Shiite families. When the 1958 revolution forced his family into exile, it lost much of its fortune, including what Chalabi said were “a million-plus square metres of land” of prime property in central Baghdad, which he now intends to reclaim. He told an American friend that his father, before going into exile, had had more land and industrial power than anyone else in Iraq. His forebears leveraged their fortune into political clout by performing favors for the powerful, such as paying off the personal debts of the royal family. In his lifetime, Chalabi’s grandfather held posts in nine Cabinets. Chalabi’s father was president of the senate and an adviser to the king.

His family once had great wealth and power, you see, but then the revolution came in 1959 1958 and he was forced into exile, dreaming of the day when he would return to Havana Baghdad and reclaim the wealth and privilege that he believes are rightfully his.