On Oct. 26, John D. Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, released a detailed National Intelligence Strategy for coordinating the nation's 15 spy agencies. It calls for building up the ranks of intelligence operatives and analysts and delineates new global missions. One of the top three key missions cited is to "bolster the growth of democracy and sustain democratic states." Reads the 20-page document: "We have learned to our peril that the lack of freedom in one state endangers the peace and freedom of others and that failed states are a refuge and breeding ground of extremism. Self-sustaining democratic states are essential to world peace and development." The other missions outlined in the document are "defeating terrorists at home and abroad" and "preventing and countering the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction."

U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl in New York Oct. 25 upheld activist attorney Lynne Stewart's conviction on terrorist conspiracy charges, finding that allegations by her lawyers were unfounded that a juror on the case feared for her life and was coerced. Koeltl denied Stewart's request for a new trial or a hearing to investigate charges that jurors were either intimidated or prejudiced against Stewart to begin with.

The persistently irritating John Tierney has done it again. In a typically smarmy column in the Oct. 25 New York Times, "And Your Point Is?", he dismisses the Plame affair as a bunch of empty hot air, asserting that "no one deserves to go to jail for leaking information to reporters without criminal intent." He also concludes: "No one deserves to be indicted on conspiracy charges for belonging to a group that believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Foreign policy mistakes are not against the law."

Condoleeza Rice spilled the beans in Congressional testimony: there really is (as we always suspected) a White House plan to redesign the Middle East! Capitol Hill liberals like Barbara Boxer squawk about the administration's "unbelievable rewriting of history" in changing the justification for the Iraq invasion after the fact. But Republicans are unrepentant: its a new world war, deal with it. From the Washington Times, Oct. 20:

Well, Judith Miller is out of jail, has testified before the grand jury, and wrote up a story on her own testimony for the New York Times. She even expresses some contrition, admitting to error, if not wilful collaboration with a White House disinformation campaign. For those who care to wade through the barrage of bureaucratese obfuscation unleashed by this twisted affair, it does shed light on how the White House played the media in the prelude to the Iraq campaign, twisted the truth, and ultimately came to regard the Central fucking Intelligence Agency as a bunch of pussy-footing liberals for actually doing their job and providing accurate, um, intelligence. Via TruthOut:

In what has become a yearly ritual, activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) staged angry protests at the Columbus Day march in Denver, while the city's Italian-Americans intransigently refused to "get it." This from an AP account online at Indian Country Today:

As drums and chants echoed in the background, demonstrators briefly staged a mock death scene in the street Oct. 8 before a Columbus Day parade passed by.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted Oct. 5 to impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects. Defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment to prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in US government custody. The amendment was added to a $440 billion military spending bill for the budget year that began Oct. 1. The proposal, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), also requires all service members to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

Vice President Dick Cheney said that the US must be prepared to fight the War on Terrorism for decades. Speaking to US military personnel at the Association of the US Army in Washington DC, he said that the only way terrorists would win was if the US lost its nerve and abandoned Iraq and the Middle East. "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort, and it will be resisted by those whose only hope for power is through the spread of violence," he said.