Hey mhaze,

Robert Parry (journalist) from Wikipedia
'Robert Parry (born June 24, 1949) is an American investigative journalist best known for his role in covering the Iran-Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US scandal in 1985. He was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting in 1984 and the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence by Harvard's Nieman Foundation in 2015. He has been the editor of Consortiumnews since 1995.'

I'd argue that his track record on exposing US government wrongdoing seems to speak for itself.
I'm also willing to give his word the benefit of the doubt over the US who falsely that told us Saddam had WMD's and who deliberately and consistently starts wars for the purpose of 'regime change' on bogus pretenses.

Armchair,

Wikipedia is hardly the place to go when making evaluations such as this. Its way to easily manipulated. If you look at the editing history of his page you'll see attempts to set the record right being suppressed by supporters (or himself?).

I prefer to go to the source and actually read a series of his articles. He's one of those who hasn't yet met a Republican who he doesn't think would look better at the end of a rope. An apologist for every enemy of the US. A journalist in the grand tradition of Walter Duranty.

Still if you just want what he says to be true then suspension of disbelief (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief) is the way to go.

mhaze,

In your opinion who was the original source of so called intelligence about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction?

He used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. More than once.

Mass killing or murder is different to mass destruction.

http://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHBD_en-GBAU731AU731&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=destruction+meaning

" the original source of so called intelligence about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction?"

I'm not sure the basis or intent of this segue. Still...

The original source was based on the fact that Hussein had and had used WMD chemical weapons both on his own people and his foreign enemies. It was also based on the reports from the UN inspectors that they couldn't account for all the WMD stcokpiles. Various intelligence agencies around the world (US, Britain, France, Oz) used this and other internal data to conclude that Iraq still had WMD stockpiles.

It was also assumed that Hussein was interfering with and being uncooperative toward the the UN inspector because he had and wanted to retain WMDs.

After the second Iraq war some (most? all?) of these stockpiles were uncovered.