It was back in mid August, around the 17^th or 18^th, that Obama, no doubt arrogant over his calls for Mubarak and Gadaffi to leave their respective offices, stated that Syria’s Assad must go.

“The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

This has clearly become the Obama doctrine and the point at the end of Obama’s stick is NATO.

So it was in Libya.

Obama said Gadaffi had to go – and soon after sending a barrage of missiles into Libya, Obama led from behind and turned the non war over to NATO.

Back in August, when Obama made his doctrine statement regarding Syria and Assad, my first question was…Or WHAT exactly? Now, my question has been, in a roundabout way, answered by Assad and in so doing, Assad proves just how dangerous the Obama doctrine is…TO ISRAEL.

Yesterday, Assad, who has no intention of either leaving or heeding the Obama doctrine, raised the stakes in a very dangerous international poker game. Assad, while meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, threatened to set the Middle East on fire if attacked by…NATO.

“If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than six hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv.”

According to the Fars News agency, Assad also stated that stressed that “Damascus will also call on Hezbollah in Lebanon to launch a fierce rocket and missile attack on Israel, one that Israeli intelligence could never imagine.”

He wasn’t done.

“All these events will happen in three hours, but in the second three hours, Iran will attack US warships in the Persian Gulf as American and European interests will be targeted simultaneously.”

Clearly, Assad has the weapons necessary to carry out such an attack if he so chooses – and we have the Russians, Iranians and North Koreans to thank for it.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, Syria has apparently developed a longer-range missile — the Scud D — with assistance from North Korea. In late September 2000, Syria successfully tested its Korean Scud-D missile with a 360-mile range. The new Scud D, with a range of some 700 kilometers, gives Damascus the option of deploying missiles deeper into Syria to better protect them. In early July 2001 an Israeli radar picked up the launch of the Scud from the Haleb region, in northern Syria, and monitored its path until it landed some 300 kilometers away in the desert of southern Syria. Although the Scud D has a longer range than the Scud-C, if it were simply a Scud derivative it would have a much lighter warhead and be rather less accurate.

On 27 May 2005 Syria test-fired three Scud missiles, the first such Syrian missile tests since 2001. The missiles included one Scud B, with a range of about 300 kilometers, and a pair of Scud D’s, with a range of about 700 kilometers. The missiles were launched from Minakh, north of Aleppo in northern Syria. It appears that the missile launchers would have been driven to this air base from their garrison at Al Safir south of Allepo. One flew about 400 kilometers to southernmost Syria, near the border with Jordan. One of the missiles disintegrated over Turkish territory, showering missile parts over two villages in the Turkish province of Hatay. This missile had been fired southwest toward the Mediterranean.

Israeli intelligence sources reportedly concluded that Syria successfully test-fired a Scud-D missile in the northeastern part of that country on 28 January 2007. The missile, reportedly 11-meter long with a range of 700 kilometers (440 miles), was built with the aid of North Korean technology.

That’s just the tip of the warhead. Syria also has  an extensive array of chemical arms and have, in the past, been so suspected of trying to refine uranium that Israel launched attacks on their facilities.

Of course, liberals will say…Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all THAT before and will be quite dismissive over any possible attack by Syria against Israel. Ron Paul followers will no doubt claim Syria has nothing which could damage Israel and even if Assad DID attack, we should just stay out of it.

Neither of those things are the point.

The POINT is that by issuing a call for Assad to GO and by employing NATO against Libya, Obama has painted himself, and our standing in the world, into the proverbial corner.

Obama clearly falsely figured that his NATO strategy, the Obama doctrine, would provide leverage against the ilk of Assad and scare him into capitulation. What a shock. Obama was wrong.

Assad has upped the anti.

So the real question has to be: Is Assad bluffing?

Liberals and Ron Paul followers would bet the farm that he is. For them, that’s an easy bet to make because they don’t own the farm.

Israel DOES.

Here’s the problem.

If Obama does NOTHING he will be seen as even weaker than he already IS in that part of the world. Obama’s strength started taking direct hits from the moment he started bowing to the Saudi King. No STRONG American President would have done such a thing – and since then, Obama’s failure to recognize Iran’s popular uprising, his hesitation in regard to Mubarak, his turning Libya over to NATO and placing OUR military under NATO control and on and on has made Obama and, in concert, the U.S. look weaker and weaker.

Do Nothing and they know they can walk all over him.

Do SOMETHING and Israel could be in the crosshairs.

Let’s take a quick look at how the Obama doctrine is working out in Libya. We strike with missiles then turn it over to NATO, aiding the rebels to oust Gadaffi. Problem is, we don’t really know who the rebels are; we do know SOME are al Qaeda, and they, the rebels, have seized stockpiles of chemical weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles because the Obama doctrine is lead from behind without a clear plan of action.

Wanna give that a whirl in Syria?

Israel needs to know that Obama is going to be a one-term president and Assad needs to realize that come January of 2013, there’s going to be a new player at the table.

Assad can either hold ’em or fold ’em.

As for Obama…

Go fish.