


Some observers view Mr. Bush's statement as an attempt to distance himself from the increasingly embarrassing collection of misdeeds carried out by himself, White House staff and members of the majority party, many of which stand in sharp contrast to Bush's campaign vow to "restore honor and diggity to the White House".

"I did not have relations with that man, Mr. Abramoff," President Bush said. "Any pictures you might of seen of me and Jack together are what we call illusions, like those things you see in the desert when your water bottle is empty. There might have been someone named Jack Abramoff managing my transition team for the Department of the Interior, but I think that was a different Jack Abramoff than the one there aren't any pictures of me together with, which there aren't, and even if there were, there's pictures of me with a lot of people and that doesn't prove anything anyway. How am I supposed to know everyone in charge of my own transition teams?"

Mr. Bush went on to detail a litany of other non-acquaintanceships, some, on the surface, quite striking.

"I never met anybody named Tom DeLay, never heard of him, sure don't have any plans to meet him," the president declared. "So any of that stuff my old friend Tom DeLay did had nothing to do with me. I also don't know anybody named, what was that again? Karl Rove? Karl Rove. I might have seen the name on a newspaper at the supermarket or in a picture at the post office, but that's it. Same thing with Scooter Libby. What the heck kind of a name is Scooter Libby, anyway? If I knew someone named Scooter, I bet you I'd remember it. So if any of these guys leaked that CIA woman, Valerie Plame's name to the press, I didn't even know the guys."

"I also never had anything to do with somebody called Donald Rumsfeld," the president continued. "If things aren't going too well in Iraq, torture, secret prisons, well, he's the one to blame, and I never met Donald Rumsfeld, so it's not my fault. Where the heck would I meet someone called Donald Rumsfeld? Paul Wolfowitz? I do not know the man. And I heard someone mention Dick Cheney. I think I seen someone named Dick Cheney at the office, but I never talked to him personally. If you might have seen pictures of me and Dick Cheney together, that's because people tell me sometimes he sneaks up behind me when I'm giving a speech, but that's it. Never heard of anybody called Halliburton, either. Or Valerie Plame."

President Bush went on to declaim knowledge of or any connection with Bob Ney, Roy Blunt, John Boehner, Bill Frist, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Douglas Feith, Dan Bartlett, Scott McClellan, Conrad Burns, Andrew Card, Alberto Gonzales, Ralph Reed, the Saudi Arabian royal family, Ari Fleischer, Manuel Miranda, John Ashcroft, Ken Lay, Michael Scanlon, David Safavian, Thomas Scully, the bin Laden family, Hamid Karzai, James Baker III, the National Security Agency, Vladimir Putin, Kellogg, Brown & Root, Michael Brown, Hurricane Katrina, "Turd Blossom", and, in fact, virtually all current and former members of his own administration and the Republican congress.

"I pretty much keep to myself when I'm at work, read the daily briefings cover to cover, delve through the news to catch up on world events and read a lot of books for historical background, then go home and have a nice chat with Laura before hitting the sack," President Bush said. "I'm working through a real good monograph on what they call latent effects of the Peloponnesian War right now, real fascinating stuff. So I don't get around all that much, never really meet that many people. It's lonely at the top, you know. Darn lonely."

President Bush remained available to reporters following his announcement, but the White House Press Corps, apparently satisfied with Bush's assertions, declined to question him further.

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor

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