A Game Changer in The Middle East #313 By Hank Silverberg The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has changed the entire picture in the Middle East. I am not an expert on the subject; in fact, there are very few of those, but from what I have seen over the years, I can write this. No one is mourning the overthrow of the brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, except maybe Russia's Vladmir Putin, who had extended a helping hand to al-Assad for decades and has now lost that bargain. The rebels in Syria who deposed al-Assad are not a cohesive bunch. Some had been Al-Quida, some are Kurdish insurgents, and still others had different motives. It is not clear if they will be able to form any kind of stable government there in the near future, making things a bit more dangerous in the region for all their immediate neighbors and the allies who support them. Those direct neighbors with common borders include Iraq, which has a fragile government; Lebanon, which is still in...