No evidence linking Iraq to Al-Qai...oh look, Mars!
Perhaps I'm just a terminal cynic, but I couldn't help feeling that the story on CNN.com of Colin Powell admitting publicly to a complete lack of hard evidence linking Iraq to Al-Qaida both before and after the war and the timing of Bush's GRAND SOOPER SPACE EXPLORASHUN PLANZ wasn't a coincidence.
How was that for a run-on sentence?
The Mars lander had just phoned home. Pictures were flowing back down in grandiose and possibly dishonest color, but gorgeous pictures nonetheless. 'We're back!' enthused NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, pouring champagne for the Mars Exploration Rover team on live T.V. Suddenly, Americans turn their attention to space for a happy reason, a good reason; maybe for the first time since Columbia's deep burn.
"Let's go to the Moon! And Mars!" shouts Dubya, outlining a bold plan involving manned space exploration. This from the administration that has kept attempting to smash the NASA budget - advocating a plan that actually seems to make little sense even on first glance. If you're going to Mars, why do you need a base on the moon? Why fight *two* gravity wells to get there? Why bother putting people on the Moon, where every last bit of supply must be shipped up? Why not simply assemble a transfer vehicle in orbit and launch from there?
Well, see, it doesn't really matter. Dubya's Brave New World isn't supposed to have humans actually leave the rock until around 2014 or so - long after he's comfortably retired.
But Colin's admission of complete fraud on the part of the Administration - no WMD, no evidence of them, Valerie Plame's hubby's report, and now no Al-Qaida links - is safely 'below the seam' on the second or third page of CNN, happening as it did the same news day as the announcement. Hordes of Americans ignore the dreary political news and rush happily to the dreams, lapping it up as Dubya tries to cover himself in a JFK/Apollo-esque cloak.
Of course, Apollo may have only happened because JFK got shot, and no-one in Congress dared kill it after that.