Will the intelligence agencies be happy to eat crow? or will we see some interesting leaks in the weeks/months to come? -- Do people actually believe this shit? Does it matter?
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Without a doubt, one of the people best positioned to answer these questions is Seymour Hersh. Much (perhaps all) of his reporting over the last few years has been built upon information given to him by intel agency and Pentagon leakers.
I doubt the agencies will be happy to eat crow, especially since (regardless of what we might think of them) there are people within the ranks who believe their mission is to provide accurate information and who were pressured to exaggerate or simply make stuff up to suit Bush and Blair's purposes.
These people performed their 'due diligence', stating the facts as understood and, in some cases, even predicting disaster should Washington get its way.
To have their original reports discarded in favor of fiction and their warnings (which came to pass) ignored -- and then to be blamed for the whole thing like a bunch of corporate flunkies (cause this sort of blame transference is all too common in business) must be truly enraging. London and Washington can be thankful this type of worker is so well disciplined.
I imagine the desire to leak is stronger than ever but the outlets are fewer. Fox is out of course and much of the rest of the corporate media is similarly useless, if somewhat less completely ideological.
This leaves a few journalists like Hersh, writing for off-the-main path pubs like the New Yorker (mainstream? yes -- as popular as TV news? no) to follow up on what's being offered.
So the effect of embarrassing leaks reaches only a fraction of its full strength potential.
.d.