I think that the Bush administration WANTS there to be some huge superpower that they can wrestle with
Spot on -- they need a "bogeyman" to scare the public into baying for their own freedoms to be suppressed. It's classic rabble-rousing, populist politics. Set up paper tigers to defeat, wave the flag, create an atmosphere where dissent is UNTHINKABLY unpatriotic, then you can get away with appropriating more and more instrusive powers to the executive at the expense of the balancing arms of govt.