US invades Syria in 2003 alongside Iraq

The drums were definitely beating to go after Syria, and there were cassus belli forming around the occupation of Lebanon, collusion with the Iraqi regime, harbouring Iraqi elements and wmd's, including alleged cooperation with Iraq over wmd's. It would have been a strategic prelude to Iran.

The reason it didn't happen was manpower. The United States simply didn't have the extra bodies necessary to invade Syria. To make matters worse, when the Iraqi army was dissolved, there was nothing left. US forces were committed to occupation. Had the US maintained an intact Iraqi army, then it would have been possible that they might have freed up the troops.

Of course, you couldn't do that while Saddam Hussein and elements of his command structure were running loose for nine months.
 
actually Hezbollah was not a major US ally...

Even before the border skirmish, some in Congress had voiced deep unease about providing military aid to a country where Hezbollah has a place in the cabinet and runs its own intelligence and communications networks. The American aid was conceived in 2005, after Syria withdrew its military from Lebanon and a pro-Western political alliance seemed to be gaining strength, with the goal of disarming Hezbollah.

The administration of President George W. Bush gave strong verbal support to Lebanon’s anti-Syrian parliamentary alliance, and in 2006 the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah buttressed the notion that Lebanon needed a stronger military as a national alternative to the Shiite group’s militia. American military aid began to flow to Lebanon for the first time in decades. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/world/middleeast/22lebanon.html



In the past few weeks, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered contingency plans for a war on Syria to be reviewed following the fall of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, his undersecretary for policy, Doug Feith, and William Luti, the head of the Pentagon's office of special plans, were asked to put together a briefing paper on the case for war against Syria, outlining its role in supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein, its links with Middle East terrorist groups and its allegedly advanced chemical weapons programme
. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/15/syria.usa

Sound familiar?

Fair enough, I guess I misremembered the exact details of the relationship.

Again, rehearsing and reediting contingency plans isn't the same thing as imminent intent.
 
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