The spirited defence of America's beleaguered spy agencies by intelligence chief George Tenet tells us more than might immediately be apparent about the role they played in bringing war to Iraq - and the lessons to be learned.
While much of what the CIA director had to say will long remain a matter of contention, some of his comments about the nature of the spying game cannot be disputed. 'In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong or completely right,' he said. And this, it is safe to assume, was the case with Iraq.
The point may seem obvious. But with independent inquiries on either side of the Atlantic due to conduct detailed postmortems, it serves as a timely reminder that in the world of intelligence gathering there is rarely such a thing as a certainty. The inquiries will focus on what now appears to have been a mistaken claim that Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat through his weapons of mass destruction. They are likely to identify embarrassing intelligence failures.
Even Mr Tenet admits the threat posed by Hussein's weapons may have been overestimated and that key information came from dubious sources. The probes might also conclude senior officials, in their enthusiasm to topple Hussein, exaggerated what they were told.
But there may be a simpler explanation for the events which built the momentum for war. It lies in the uneasy relationship between intelligence agencies and their governments. Information gleaned from the murky world of espionage inevitably will be hard to substantiate - and is open to different assessments. As Mr Tenet said: 'Everyone has different views of what intelligence means.'
But it is in the interests of intelligence agencies to highlight the risks - and this is what they tend to do. Their job is to give early warning of any threat. Their worst nightmare is to fail to alert the government to an impending attack. September 11 increased their desire to emphasise perceived dangers. In most circumstances, this is countered by the reluctance of governments to admit to bad news or to alarm their peoples - and thus the preference for putting a more positive spin on any information they are given.