Special to the Daily Dishrag - The timely discovery today of a surgeon's error solved the riddle of Vice President Dick Cheney's recent aberrant behavior and forestalled extreme remedies by the White House.
    Liberals, conservatives, and tiresome pundits alike were shocked when, following his recent surgery, the Vice President suddenly reversed his positions on several key administration policies, most notably the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as "Star Wars."
    "It's a scam, pure and simple," said the VP.  "A welfare program for the military and defense contractors.  It won't work, and it runs a high risk of alienating Russia and other allies."
    The Vice President also did an about face on US policy toward the United Nations.
    "We have to pay our dues," he said.  "If anyone else pulled the crap we're pulling, we'd call them deadbeats.  Our exclusion from the Human Rights Committee should be a wake up call.  We need to talk with these other nations on a footing of equality and figure out what we can do together to promote peace, health, and prosperity.  Oh, yeah.  And we need to ratify and observe the Kyoto Accords on Global Warming.  It's a pitifully small step, but it's the least we can do."
    President Bush called his cabinet into emergency session to consider what steps to take to rein in his renegade Vice President.  At the same time, the House of Representatives was preparing articles of impeachment, and the Supreme Court met to discuss whether they had the authority to impose a death penalty in the absence of any charges.  By a vote of 5 to 4, they concluded that they did.
    The President's Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, issued the following statement:  "The President wanted to hire a hit man until he remembered that the Vice President was his hit man."
    At this critical juncture, the doctor who performed the Vice President's surgery discovered his error.  "Is my face red," he said.  "I inadvertently installed a peacemaker instead of a pacemaker."
    The error has been corrected, and the Vice President is once again the bellicose tool of corporate America.  The nation will sleep more securely tonight.