With the Middle East situation deteriorating hourly, how many people remember that Obama characterized the problems in Egypt, Syria and Libya as “bumps in the road?”

NBC is reporting on one of these bumps: Syria appears to be preparing to use chemical weapons of mass destruction against its own people …

The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday. The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for Sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said.

As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs. Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single Sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.

U.S. officials stressed that as of now, the Sarin bombs hadn't been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn't issued a final order to use them. But if he does, one of the officials said, "there's little the outside world can do to stop it."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated U.S. warnings to Assad not to use chemical weapons, saying he would be crossing "a red line" if he did so. <Source>

In Obama’s own words …

KROFT: Have recent events in the Middle East given you any pause about your support for the governments that have come to power following the Arab Spring?

OBAMA: Well, I'd said even at the time that this is going to be a rocky path. The question presumes that somehow we could have stopped this wave of change. I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have -- have to be able to participate in their own governance. But I -- I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty -- pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because, you know, in a lot of these places, the one organizing principle has been Islam. The one part of society that hasn't been controlled completely by the government. There are strains of extremism, and anti-Americanism, and anti-Western sentiment. And, you know, can -- can be tapped into by demagogues. There will probably be some times where we bump up against some of these countries and have strong disagreements but I do think that over the long term we are more likely to get a Middle East and North Africa that is more peaceful, more prosperous and more aligned with -- with our interests. This is a tumultuous time that we're in. But we can and we will meet those challenges if we stay true to who we are.  <Source: Transcript of Obama on '60 Minutes'>

Bottom Line …

Whether or not the military would use chemical weapons to attack their own people, making them war criminals subject to the death penalty is up for debate. But it does appear that Assad is conditioning the propaganda battlefield for an exile to a foreign country, some say Cuba or Venezuela, but our best guess is that he may renounce control over Egypt and be exiled to a coastal strip that is controlled by his “Alawite” religious sect.

In any event, Barack Hussein Obama, the arbiter of all things great and small was wrong again – big time wrong – as he was on healthcare, stimulus funds, taxes, the fiscal cliff and both foreign and domestic policies.

Bump in the road, indeed! More like a mountain about to be turned into a crater.

-- steve