A former Iraqi military chief-of-staff, who turned against Saddam in 1996, he had publicly declared that he was prepared to lead a rebel army into Iraq. "All real Iraqis want to overthrow this regime and I am one of them," he declared from his home in Denmark.
The CIA had touted Gen. Khazraji as the leading candidate of a group of Sunni military officers who might be "Iraq's Karzai" - a reference to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In a March 2002 article in the New Yorker, writer Seymour Hersh says that Khazraji was the spy agency's preferred choice. 
The CIA's brightest prospect, officials told me, is Nizar Khazraji, a former Iraqi Army chief of staff who defected in the mid-nineties. As a Sunni and a former combat general, Khazraji is viewed by the CIA as being far more acceptable to the Iraqi officer corps than Ahmad Chalabi (the Pentagon's choice), a Shiite who left Iraq in 1958.
The Washington Post reported that Khazraji was the first choice of Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well. 
But the general was a controversial figure. He had been in charge of the Iraqi army when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. He was also accused of being involved with Operation Anfal, a military clampdown on Kurdish areas in the late 1980s. More than 180,000 Kurds are said to have died during that period. 

He fled to Denmark after he left Iraq. The BBC reports that the Danish government in 2002 arrested him on charges of using chemical weapons against Kurds. He was detained after a Kurdish refugee apparently recognized him in the street and informed police. But on March 17, two days before the war in Iraq began, Khazraji left his home in Denmark and disappeared. Reports in the Danish media speculated that he had been "spirited away" with the help of the CIA and "an Arab nation." 

Intelligence Online says that just before his death, he had been in Kuwait helping the US to persuade other Iraqi leadership figures to defect. 

Between Iraq and a cornerstone 

US blueprints to rebuild Iraq are changing. Chief architect Jay Garner is charged to lay a cornerstone of stability and then erect the pillars of a liberal democracy. But the sudden passion of Shiite Muslims suggests Iraq's future could be based instead on the five pillars of Islam. Newfound Shiite boldness could indicate short-lived and unbridled enthusiasm – as in the case of post-war looting. But some American officials are anxious that it could mark a nascent surge toward theocracy. Already, the Bush administration is warning neighboring Iran not to influence Iraq's Shiite population. 

Iran's foreign minister, MSNBC reports, rejected US suggestions that Tehran was interfering in Iraq and said it was not seeking to promote the political role of Shiite Muslims. American officials are also working to undermine the authority of Baghdad's self-appointed administrator, Muhammad Mohsen Zobeidi, The New York Times reports. 

Filling Iraq's political vacuum won't be easy. Some American observers are putting their trust in exiled political opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi. But Chalabi is hated, an Arab News opinion piece argues, "because he represents secular democracy and a staunch commitment toward political equality for all." His forty years away from Iraq, bank fraud scandal, and luxurious lifestyle probably don't help his popularity either. 

Another Arab News piece laments the spoils of war, while the Village Voice criticizes the resurgence of corporate colonialism in post-war Iraq. 

National Review meanwhile, suggests that Israeli history may be useful in guiding US efforts to help Iraq "grow up." 

"The Israeli experience in Lebanon indicates that the United States can liberate Iraq and even keep a garrison in the background in case of emergency – especially with neighbors like Iran and Syria – but Iraqis are going to have to remake their country for themselves."
And National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that Iraq should be more like Switzerland. 

The Los Angeles Times examines the conscience of one Jasem Mohammed, an Iraqi "who had never stolen anything in his life." He's one of many Iraqis who are seizing the "golden days" of lawlessness to build homes on land they don't own with stolen materials. 

Even if many Iraqis took a "leave no TV behind" approach to the looting, it now appears that some citizens stole with considerably nobler aims. The Washington Post reports on Iraqis who stole museum treasures to protect them from looters. "At least a small portion of the thousands of objects that disappeared, it seems, were tucked away for safekeeping," the Post writes.