Psychologists have been studying the hunches that alert US soldiers in Iraq to danger. They have found that the much-cited “gut instinct” is a kind of hyperempirical ability: through long experience, the soldier is able to process sensory observations emotionally before he or she is conscious of what the brain has registered.

It is reassuring to know that US soldiers in Iraq have such mental skills at their disposal. But it is worth recalling that the danger they face is the result of hunches with a much weaker basis in reality – intelligence failures now commonly seen as the product of “groupthink” in the US intelligence establishment.