What the Senate Intelligence Committee report really means

While the Senate Intelligence Committee declared that the CIA screwed up the Iraqi weapons dealie, it is a seperate matter from whether the Bush Administration overstated the threat beyond what the CIA presented in the NIE. The Committee has not yet given a verdict on that, and there is in fact no reason to believe that by harshly criticizing the CIA the Committee is ipso facto saying Bush did no wrong (I just wanted to use 'ipso facto' because I remember that Patrick R. used to use those words). And, on top of that, we have to remember that the CIA criticism is all about the NIE -- and the Bush administration started hyping the Iraqi threat 2-3 months before that came out.
 
You can read about this all in Andrew Rosenthal's Editorial Observer in Sunday's Times:
Decoding the Senate Intelligence Committee Investigation on Iraq
 
I don't usually like Editorial Observers, and if I'm not mistaken Rosenthal was a (the?) top foreign editor before, during, and immediately after the Iraq war, and a big defender of the Times' coverage that parroted the Bush Administration line.. That said, he seems to be saying something that few others are saying right now.