Bush calls for arrest of entire CIA

US President George W Bush has called for the arrest of all members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The official reason for issuing federal arrest warrants for every CIA employee has not been made public. However, while preparing for a TV interview — for the Fox exposé 'Booze & Fundamentalism' — a private conversation between President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney was accidentally taped.

According to a leaked transcript, Bush said: "Look Dick, I don't want people remembering me as the guy who fucked-up in Iraq. I mean, I don't want 'em thinking it was all my doing, right? Goddamnit, the CIA are supposed to provide intelligence ... see, it says so right in their name. But not one of those bastards told me what a total clusterfuck it was going to be."

Cheney's reply was muffled and was quickly interrupted by the President.

"I don't want to hear that. Look, the Italians have shown us the way. I didn't know arresting CIA agents was an option. But now it makes a lot of sense."

One potential snag is that no-one actually knows how many people work for the CIA. "It's a secret, apparently," said a White House aide. "Only the CIA knows for sure, and they're not telling us. So what else is new?"

The same aide confirmed that, from this point in time, the CIA is to be given, "full credit for the planning and execution of the Iraq war and anything else we might be blamed for before the President's term of office ends".

He also pointed out that President Bush could not be held responsible for not knowing what the CIA didn't tell him, and that Donald Rumsfeld would be coming out of retirement to make a statement to this effect — or something very like it — soon.