President Bush today responded to a new report investigating the bogus pre-war intelligence scam that led to war in Iraq by admitting that the whole thing was nothing more than a big prank.
"Gotcha. Heh-heh," Bush said to a slack-jawed pack of media jackals assembled for the April 1 press conference. "You been punk'd. Heh-heh."
"The whole weapons of mass destruction thing, the stuff about Saddam being linked to al Qaeda… I mean we even had FOX News telling people Iraq had to pay for Sept. 11. It was classic," said Bush, barely able to control his glee.
"And I couldn't have done it without all you guys," Bush told the assembled media. "It was Rummy's idea but everybody was in on it Condi, Wolfie, Cheney, the whole gang. Special thanks to the White House press corps. Everybody except that Colin Powell guy, of course. We punk'd him too."
"Uranium yellowcake, aluminum tubes; that was Condi. And when George Tenet came up with that 'Slam dunk' bit, I swear I thought Cheney was gonna have an aneurysm," Bush snickered. "I've gotta take credit for 'Mission Accomplished' though. You had to love me in that flightsuit, right?"
The president said he almost blew the gag just over a year ago on March 26 when he did a standup routine at the Radio & Television Correspondents Association annual dinner. "Those weapons of mass destruction must be here somewhere," the commander-in-cheek said at the time, while showing a photograph of him looking under a desk.
Despite some good-natured cajoling from the press, Bush said the nation will have to wait until April 1, 2006, to learn the punchline of his Social Security reform prank.
Also on tonight's "13 O'Cock News":
Canseco claims he did steroids with Bush
Former pro baseball knucklehead Jose Canseco claims in a new book that he shared steroids not only with the slugger Mark McGwire, but also with George W. Bush.
Canseco goes on to speculate that Bush's subsequent behavior -- including his dishonest and boneheaded leadership in the Iraq war -- may be a result of the phenomenon known as "roid rage."
Canseco claims that Bush -- whose daddy's friends gave him a cushy baseball job with the Texas Rangers after he lost his shirt in the oil industry -- confided his desire to "get big" and admitted he didn't see it happening in business or politics. Canseco told the Humor Gazette that when he suggested steroids, Bush grinned and said, "Bring 'em on."
Bush, who served as a co-owner of the Rangers when Canseco joined the team in 1992, denied any knowledge of steroid use and claimed he has no recollection of the psychologically deranged he-man ever poking him in the ass with a needle.
The White House issued a statement saying that when Bush brought Canseco to Texas he had no clue that everyone else in the world knew the artificially pumped-up player was a poster boy for steroids.
Canseco -- who also claims to have injected Barbara Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Arnold Schwarzenegger -- is unrepentant about his own steroid use, saying that without the drug he might never have become the only man in baseball history to have a fly ball bounce off his head and into the stands for a home run.
This just in: The White House is denying a report that Canseco obtained nuclear weapons from North Korea in exchange for shooting steroids into the buttocks of Kim Jong Il.
