Despite the Obama administration's supposedly "high confidence" regarding Syrian government guilt over the Aug. 21 chemical attack near Damascus, a dozen former U.S. military and intelligence officials are telling President Obama that they are picking up information that undercuts the Official Story.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?

Precedence: IMMEDIATE

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as "plausible denial."

We have been down this road before - with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell's Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent "intelligence" to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled - or, at the least, very poorly advised.

While the mainstream media admonishes John McCain for playing a poker game on his iPhone during the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearings on Syria last Wednesday, no one seems to have noticed that the Republican Senator has, for several years, been supporting and mingling with Al Qaeda commanders in the field in blatant violation of international law as well as in breach of US anti-terrorism legislation.

In April 2011, Senator John McCain described the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels in Libya as follows:

"I have met with these brave fighters, and they are not Al-Qaeda. To the contrary: They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation. We should help them do it." - Senator John McCain in Benghazi, Libya April 22, 2011.

Pope Francis has written to Vladimir Putin criticising world leaders for standing by while a "senseless massacre" unfolded in Syria.

In a letter sent on Sept 4 to Mr Putin in his role of host of the G20 conference, and published on Thursday, Francis wrote: "It is regrettable that, from the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, one-sided interests have prevailed and in fact hindered the search for a solution that would have avoided the senseless massacre now unfolding."

Through Mr Putin, Francis appealed to the G20 leaders gathering in Russia: "The leaders of the G20 cannot remain indifferent to the dramatic situation of the beloved Syrian people which has lasted far too long, and even risks bringing greater suffering to a region bitterly tested by strife and needful of peace.

"To the leaders present, to each and every one, I make a heartfelt appeal for them to help find ways to overcome the conflicting positions and to lay aside the futile pursuit of a military solution."

He added: "Rather, let there be a renewed commitment to seek, with courage and determination, a peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiation of the parties, unanimously supported by the international community. Moreover, all governments have the moral duty to do everything possible to ensure humanitarian assistance to those suffering because of the conflict, both within and beyond the country's borders."

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi denied claims made on Thursday by Argentinian newspaper Clarin that Francis had contacted President Assad of Syria urging him to halt attacks in Syria. He also denied reports made by the paper that Francis had personally contacted the US White House to urge the calling off of any planned attack on Syria.

As President Obama charges ahead with US war plans in Syria, a list of potential targets is currently being passed around the US Department of Defense, as war planners in Washington DC and Tel Aviv coordinate how best to capitalise on the coming military attack on Syria.

Earlier this month, Washington had ordered the shut down of some two dozen American posts throughout the Middle East and Africa due to an unspecified "terrorist threat"

Considering Israel's joint operating status with US military assets in the region and its horrible record of violating its neighbors' air space and bombing its neighbors - including Lebanon in 2006, it's no surprise that the US State Department has suddenly ordered all "non-emergency personnel" and their family members to leave the U.S. Embassy in Beirut today, and has warned all Americans to avoid travel to Lebanon due to an undisclosed "threat" to the diplomatic mission in that country.

A similar operation is also underway regarding U.S. citizens in Turkey including a draw-down of staff at the U.S. Consulate General in Adana, Turkey.

Disgraced ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi made a 20-year pact with Mafia bosses to whom he paid millions of euros in exchange for protection and help with his business empire, according to a judicial report.

The tycoon's deal with the mob was described by judges of the Palermo Appeals Court as part of their 476-page reasoning, released on Thursday, behind the jail sentence for his Mafia association given to Berlusconi's close friend Marcello Dell'Utri.

The judges say that Dell'Utri, a Palermo-born former senator in Berlusconi's PDL (People of Freedom) Party, was the mogul's go-between with the Cosa Nostra for 20 years, up until 1992, the year in which the Mafia assassinated two prosecutors in bomb attacks.

The report follows a dreadful summer for the three-time prime minister. In June he was found guilty of paying for sex with an under-age girl and abuse of office in the "Rubygate" affair. In August, he was definitively convicted of tax fraud, for which he is due to serve a year of house arrest or community service, and is also likely to be expelled from parliament.

Political pundit James Walston, of the American University of Rome, described the report as "another nail in the coffin of Silvio Berlusconi".

The Obama administration has selectively used intelligence to justify military strikes on Syria, former military officers with access to the original intelligence reports say, in a manner that goes far beyond what critics charged the Bush administration of doing in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.

According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain, France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel's famed Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.

The doctored report was leaked to a private Internet-based newsletter that boasts of close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, and led to news reports that the United States now had firm evidence showing that the Syrian government had ordered the chemical weapons attack on August 21 against a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has begun an initiative to discover the viability of sequencing American infant's DNA through the "heel stick" blood drawn screening conducted on newborns in hospitals to determine the propensity toward life-threatening diseases.

This scheme will cost $25 million over 5 years to understand each individual genetic code in lieu of having DNA routinely mapped and stored in a medical record.

Whether this study would have value has not been established. Experts warn that there are ethical questions surrounding such an endeavor.

Using genetic information to direct infant healthcare is a major concern.

The National Institute of Child health and Human Development (NICHHD) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) are collaborating to fund this initiative.

The US today ordered evacuation of non-emergency staff from Lebanon and Turkey amid an imminent military strike against Syria, as authorities did not rule out similar draw-down from other diplomatic posts in the region.

"The Department of State has ordered a draw-down of non-emergency US Government personnel and family members in Beirut, Lebanon and approved the draw-down of non-emergency personnel and family members who wish to leave Adana, Turkey," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf said.

The evacuations came as the US has been trying to drum up support for a military strike against the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad for the alleged use of chemical weapons against the civilians last month.

"Given the current tensions in the region, as well as potential threats to US Government facilities and personnel, we are taking these steps out of an abundance of caution to protect our employees and their families, and local employees and visitors to our facilities," she said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that his country will help the Syrian government in the event of a foreign military intervention.

Putin made the remarks on Friday at a news conference on the final day of the G20 summit in St. Petersburg.

The Russian president, however, did not elaborate on how Moscow would help Damascus.

It was not clear if Moscow planned to defend Syria and increase military assistance.

"Will we help Syria? We will. We are helping them now. We supply weapons, we cooperate in the economic sphere, and I hope we will cooperate more in the humanitarian sphere ... to provide help for those people - civilians - who are in a difficult situation today," Putin said.

Revelations of a U.S. spy program that allegedly allows digital surveillance of the presidents of Brazil and Mexico have drawn cries of indignation and anger in both nations, but the fallout may be strongest for U.S.-Brazil relations.

At stake is whether Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will cancel a planned state visit to Washington in October, the first offered by President Barack Obama this year, or will take action on digital security that may affect U.S. companies such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Brazil's O Globo television network reported Sunday night that the National Security Agency had spied on the emails, telephone calls and text messages of Rousseff and President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico. The report was based on documents obtained by journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, from Edward Snowden, a fugitive former NSA contractor who's living in Moscow.