Your points on ethos are extremely important for bloggers. Just how close am I to interpreting facts and trusting sources without wishful thinking or ideology getting in the way? It's so damned easy to blow your credit- although candidly admitting mistakes goes a long way in recovering trust.

Judith Miller is certainly a case in point. She betrayed her readership so badly, and was in a willing position to screw all of us, that whatever she writes now will carry that onus.

George Tenet may be a more interesting case. I haven't read his apology nor watched his interviews but he comes from a small world where bonding was very important. And I think that in his mind his gravest betrayal was not towards us since he could call that duty. Powell, too, was a dutiful soldier. Tenet's deepest betrayal was towards his colleagues (let's put aside our personal opinions on the CIA).  

In the end Tenet caved in and let the utter crap provided by Curveball and the English on Africa to be used politically, despite unequivocal proof to the contrary by his own agency. Everyone under Tenet, with the exception of the politicized WINPAC, knew damned well Saddam had no WMD and they did everything in their power to make it perfectly clear. But they were up against ideological swine staring at a wristwatch.

So it was bad enough that Tenet let the pre-war garbage slip through but it was much worse when he asserted that the CIA did not know that Curveball was a drunken fabricator. Tenet was lying. And his colleagues, the people who spent their lives gathering intelligence, were offended and outraged.

Tenet's resignation is best seen under that light. He betrayed the trust of his colleagues. He didn't belong there anymore. He was a fink. His parting remark says it all: The CIA was damned good at getting it right. It did a very, very good job. He squandered that and added insult to injury. Had he kept his mouth shut perhaps we could have looked the other way and conceded him a teaspoon of personal honour.