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SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- President Obama honored the 12th anniversary of 9/11 this Wednesday during a solemn memorial service in which he remembered the 3,000 victims who perished during al Qaeda's September 2001 terror plots in New York and D.C., but then forgot them moments later by indirectly urging public support for a U.S. strike against Syria to "defend our nation" against enduring threats, though different than the ones faced by the nation in 2001. Analysts warn that U.S. involvement in Syria could reignite anti-American sentiment among militant Islamic terror groups.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- After more than two years of condemning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the bloody conflict his regime launched in retaliation to the rebel uprisings in March 2011, the U.S. government finally threatened military intervention on Monday after al-Assad's use of chemical weapons against civilians became incontrovertible. The catalyst occurred on August 21, when snipers targeted U.N. weapons experts on their way to investigate an alleged chemical attack. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters that President Obama is now seeking to hold al-Assad accountable for deploying "the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people." And those vulnerable people, according to Edward Kraftstofflieber, a senior analyst with the State Department, are consumers living in oil-reliant nations to the West. "For the first time, the Syrian conflict seems poised to disrupt oil transport," Kraftstofflieber warned. "With gas prices soaring and the Labor Day holiday fast approaching, we must act now."

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Aging legislator John McCain (R-Ariz.) stunned his family Monday when he revealed in a Twitter post that he had crossed the border into war-ravaged Syria where he met with rebels who are fighting to overthrow the tyrannical regime of Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the country's dictator. McCain's daughter, Meghan, admitted that she learned of her father's whereabouts only after discovering his tweet. She posted in response: "Nothing quite like finding out via twitter that my father secretly snuck into Syria and met with rebel leaders." The 76-year-old senator appeared dazed and incoherent when asked how he wound up more than 7,000 miles from Arizona, but indicated that he had been searching for one of his many homes, the exact number and locations of which he famously can't remember.