Vice President Receives Wave of Apologies

Shooting an attorney means never having to say you're sorry

Special to The WitList
20 February 2006 -- 16:45 GMT

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX -- Recovering gunshot victim Harry Whittington apologized for stepping in front of Dick Cheney's .28 gauge shotgun last week. The 78-year-old attorney said it wasn't the vice president's fault if Whittington was just a magnet for birdshot.

Whittington's admission of guilt caused other critics of the vice president to offer apologies of their own.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy apologized to the vice president for accidentally stepping in front of him as he fired off an insult in June 2004. Mr. Cheney's retort -- which suggested the senator perform an anatomically impossible act -- was actually aimed at a covey of schoolchildren that had been flushed from the Senate Gallery.

The news media offered an apology to the White House, saying it should have simply taken the word of designated eyewitness/spokeswoman Katherine Armstrong, even though she didn't actually witness the event in question and offered conflicting accounts. The media also said it would accept Fox News as the official conduit for all White House statements.

The people of Iraq offered a collective apology to the vice president for failing to greet the American troops as liberators. A spokesperson said being turned from a modern society into a medieval one overnight had dampened the Iraqis' enthusiasm, but it was really all their own fault parts of the country still had no electricity, clean water, or working toilets nearly three years after the invasion.

In a taped statement left at the offices of Al Jazeera, Iraq's insurgents apologized to the vice president for failing to stick to his timetable for withdrawal. The insurgents said they'd intended to wrap up operations last spring, but after the vice president declared the insurgency "in its final throes," some rebels vowed to keep fighting for another 10 years.

Inmates at Guantanamo Bay blame themselves for being incarcerated, tortured, and held for years without being charged with a crime. "We should not have been born Arabs," said one detainee between bouts of waterboarding. "That was stupid stupid stupid."

Finally, the vice president issued another apology, his second within the past 65 years, during which he apologized for apologizing.

"Seeing my reputation fall like that was one of the worst days of my life," Mr. Cheney admitted in a conversation with Fox anchor Brit Hume. "It was wrong to say I was wrong. It won't happen again."