Probably only a matter of time:

Senior aides to President Bush are vigorously debating what to do about Syria as evidence mounts that the government in Damascus is stepping up support for the terror group Hezbollah and allowing anti-American insurgents to reach Iraq, according to U.S. officials.
Civilians in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office are pushing for military action and have drawn up plans for punitive airstrikes and cross-border incursions by U.S. forces, according to three officials.
But Bush’s White House advisers, backed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department, are arguing against a new military venture with much of the U.S. military tied down in Iraq and a presidential-election year under way.
That view appears to have prevailed, for now.

I don’t fully understand the situation with the anti-Israeli terror groups. But as far as the influx of insurgents goes, that was a foreseeable consequence of the invasion of Iraq. Step into a hornet’s nest and you should expect hornets to come after you.

X Cash
X Shoes
X Socks
X Pants
X Shirts
X Underwear
X Toiletries
X Landmine [Ooops].

So why is President Bush taking about establishing a moon station? Is this merely an election-year ploy? Is this a backhanded way of revving up the aerospace industry and militarizing space? Does this stem from a personal intellectual fascination with the wonders of space? (Ha ha ha)
According to the Washington Post, the administration seeks a “Kennedy moment“:

Sources involved in the discussions said Bush and his advisers view the new plans for human space travel as a way to unify the country behind a gigantic common purpose at a time when relations between the parties are strained and polls show that Americans are closely divided on many issues.
“It’s going back to being a uniter, not a divider,” a presidential adviser said, echoing language from Bush’s previous campaign, “and trying to rally people emotionally around a great national purpose.”

[See Ezra Klein’s post on why this is a missed opportunity to bring people together.]
So who really knows what’s going on behind the scenes. Just to be safe, though, it might not be a bad idea to make sure that neither the Bush’s nor any of their cronies have a financial interest in this company.

Vice President Dick Cheney, 2000:

“The fact of the matter is, we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody,” Cheney said. “And I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s really no one else’s business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard.
“The next step, then . . . is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship. That matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that’s appropriate. I don’t think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area.”

Cheney, today:

Dick Cheney . . . said Friday he would support a presidential push to ban same-sex marriage.
. . .
“[A]t this stage, obviously, the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes.”

Too bad Cheney wasn’t so wishy-washy when he lead the administration’s push for invading Iraq.

More from the “60 Minutes” interview, per Drudge:

The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq including the use of American troops within days of President Bush’s inauguration in January of 2001, not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported. That is what former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O’Neill talks to Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Jan. 11 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” he tells Stahl. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really huge leap,” says O’Neill.

Just further confirmation of what Resonance has suspected for nearly a year. What was all that hot air about how 9/11 taught us that we need to invade Iraq?
UPDATE: More Drudge:

O’Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, “The Price of Loyalty,” authored by Ron Suskind. Suskind says O’Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam’s downfall, including post-war contingencies like peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq’s oil. “There are memos,” Suskind tells Stahl, “One of them marked ‘secret’ says ‘Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'” A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled “Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” outlines areas of oil exploration. “It talks about contractors around the world from…30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq,” Suskind says.

CBS News:

In the book, O’Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. “It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,'” says O’Neill in the book.

In other words, there wasn’t any debate on whether or not the war was right or wrong. The only issue was how to sell it politically.
That mindset would explain the lackluster U.N. effort and rejection of weapons inspections.