The Cheney Project

Dick Cheney is a robot.

I know you've heard that one before. My friends, it is no longer conjecture, but documented fact. As a result of a great deal of journalist-esque investigation, I have developed contacts deep in the bowels of the NSA archives. These brave whistleblowers have leaked to me a top secret set of documents that detail the design and construction of Dick Cheney over the period of 1967-1969. The Cheney was to be the prototype for a production run of diplomatic androids that would be dispersed to US embassies across the globe to support US military campaigns in Southeast Asia. Due to the unpredictable nature of the Cheney prototype, plans for large-scale production were cancelled, but the prototype continues to operate as the Vice President.

The design team was led by German robot scientist, Karl Von Wittengisteineneuberhausen, infamous for his wartime experiments constructing talking Nazi children's dolls (programmed to say "I love teddy bears and Hitler!" and "I want a Slavic servant for my birthday!" among other chilling phrases). The initial test runs of the Cheney were not without their difficulties. During artificial intelligence tests in September 1968, the Cheney misidentified 3 lab technicians as Soviet nuclear warheads. Tragically, it removed the unwitting scientists' heads and attempted to disarm their decapitated bodies with pliers. Though the project was nearly scrapped as a result of this incident, the Cheney was completed in April of 1969 and was released into the Nixon administration under the command of Donald Rumsfeld.

The official explanation for the Cheney's lack of public exposure in recent years is its need for frequent "medical procedures." In fact, it has become necessary for the Cheney to undergo frequent system checks and repairs. Its nuclear batteries are fading, and have led in recent years to irritability (and inappropriate utterances directed at Democratic Senators.) The Cheney has been reprogrammed in recent years to repeat GOP talking points during interviews and appearances before veteran's organizations, though he often fails even at this simple task due to data corruption in his memory core.

Perhaps no subsystem is more error-prone than his IFF (Identify Friend/Foe) circuitry. This module underwent a massive overhaul in 1983, but despite this, numerous malfunctions have been recorded, increasing in number over the last 5 years. It seems clear that this rapidly deteriorating circuitry subsystem failed critically on Saturday, which led Cheney to identify 78-year-old Harry Whittington as a quail, or possibly as a 15-year-old Guantanamo detainee. Only his muddled robot mind knows for sure. Unconfirmed are suspicions that the Cheney's increasing difficulty distinguishing the threat level of targets may have contributed significantly to the invasion of Iraq. The Cheney continues to assert that WMD's were present in Iraq before the invasion; his error-prone IFF may be to blame.

While it represents an impressive feat of engineering, it is clear that the Cheney needs to be powered down or at least confined to its underground repair bunker, for the safety of the world and any potential hunting partners.