Gather round friends, and hear a tale of woe and misery: the tragedy of being a young investigative reporter for a small independent magazine with few resources or contacts, scant experience, and an office thousands of miles away from Washington. Well, okay, perhaps that's too much buildup. But the lament is real: for the last month I've been working diligently on a story about the lack of coordination between those intelligence programs that track WMDs and such. Clever, huh? Well sure. But as it turns out, I see that the GAO has just released a new report (PDF) on this very topic. Needless to say, they've done a bang-up job—given that they're, y'know, the frickin' GAO. Grrr.

Oddly enough, though, the report is curiously mute on the topic of whether or not the new National Intelligence Director will be able to get everybody onto the same page. (Isn't that what he or she is supposed to do after all—coordinate stuff?) But odds are probably not, especially after Rumsfeld and Duncan Hunter essentially neutered the new position. Oh well. Through the grapevine, I've also heard that having a coherent WMD policy from the White House would help matters. Uh-huh.