The U.S. government were pushing for a war with Syria as early as 2003, Congress documents reveal. Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded that Syria sever its connections with organisations aiding Palestinians pursuing self-determination on May 2, 2003 – threatening the government with military action if they did not comply. In September 2003 the US Under Secretary Of State John Bolton warned that Syria may be pursuing a WMD program, urging the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that action needed to be taken. Gowans.wordpress.com reports: Documents prepared by US Congress researchers as early as 2005 revealed that the US government was actively weighing regime change in Syria long before the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, challenging the view that US support for the Syrian rebels is based on allegiance to a “democratic uprising” and showing that it is simply an extension of a long-standing policy of seeking to topple the government in Damascus. Indeed, the researchers made clear that the US government’s motivation to overthrow the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is unrelated to democracy promotion in the Middle East. In point of fact, they noted that Washington’s preference is for secular dictatorships (Egypt) and monarchies (Jordan [...]