Human Error Cited in Rove Exorcism SNAFU

Washington, D.C., November 27, 2007 -- Human error was cited as the cause of the latest failure to exorcise what leading demonologists have termed "an unprecedented can of infernal worms" from the tormented soul of White House Special Advisor Karl Rove.

According to Lenny Rasputin, Deputy Team Adjunct on the Exorcise Rove Special White House Presidential Task Force (ERSWHPTF), the mix-up occurred when instructions from the ERSWHPTF were garbled during transmission via a glitchy cell-phone link to the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington D.C's prestigious Demon Removal Center. The end result, which political pundits predict may mark a perilous turning point in Rove's hitherto unblemished career, is that Rove was given exercise and liposuction, rather than exorcism.

"It's just one of those silly things that can happen to anybody," said Rasputin. "It's a lot like when a doctor writes an illegible prescription, and the patient gets a bottle of Lithium instead of Losec from the pharmacist. You get a docile, uncomplaining patient, but there's still a vat of acid eating away at his stomach lining."

Rove's planned exorcism, which was cited by political observers as an unusually drastic recourse for the Bush Administration, famed for circling the wagons around its own, was initially handed down as a sentence by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for Rove's involvement in the Valerie Plame incident of 2004-5.

Under the weight of mounting evidence from a large and increasingly vociferous group of Bush Administration "Deep Throats", most of whom are now unaccountably deceased, Rove was eventually forced to plead guilty to complicity in the exposure of Plame, an undercover CIA agent, as retribution for what Rove termed "cocksuckin' disloyal bullshit" on the part of Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson acted as a whistleblower in 2003 to expose Bush's spurious claims that Saddam Hussein had attempted to obtain enriched uranium from Niger, a claim voiced frequently by the president during the public-relations ramp-up to the ongoing Iraq war.

In what numerous veteran legal observers term "a first", Karl Rove invoked an erstwhile unknown "possessed by demons" defense, claiming that his soul had been under the control of unholy entities at the time and that he was thus personally unaccountable for his actions. Following is a short excerpt from the Special Advisor's moving testimony.

"It was like I was being boiled alive in caustic juices from my own cranium, Your Honors," Rove testified. "A thousand hell-demons shrieked and gabbled in my ears day and night, on the cot, in the limo, AF1, at the buffet. At the donut place on the corner when I was getting a donut and some deep-fried Espresso. They controlled, ruled, usurped my arms, my legs, my eyes, my ears, my mouth. They made me eat and eat and get fatter and fatter until I looked like a rancid grub feeding off the rotting corpse of a once great America. They had yellow eyes and made me do evil. Evil! Evil! Whispering, whispering, whispering, like press-on fingernails on the whiteboard of my whats-it, con-doodad. Conscience! Screeching voices like hellfire, damnation, flaming perdition, only with a twang."

The 5-4 decision of the court found Rove, to quote one Justice's wry opinion, "guilty as hell", but accepted his possession plea and sentenced the respected advisor to "a thorough, complete, top-to-bottom verified exorcism at the defendant's expense, to be carried out no later than December the First, 2007."

An earlier attempted exorcism of Karl Rove failed when the presiding priest, Father John McClintock of Georgetown, fatally swallowed both of his own arms, a portion of his leg, and a small, antique chest of drawers during the procedure.

"That's why this latest SNAFU's such a darn shame," said Rasputin. "We have to go and do the whole thing over again. Again."

A slimmer, tauter, tanner Rove, who provided a brief and rare statement to members of the press following his interlude of liposuction and exercise, said he "felt like a million bucks" after the procedure. A White House aide immediately presented him with the sum, in cash, and asked if he'd like anything else, like a glass of water or a high-class whore.

Despite Rove's high spirits, Wilfred Pinglebopper, Clerk to Judge Jooples of the D.C. District Court, assured reporters the sentence cannot yet be considered to have been carried out.

"He has another three days. After that, we'll have to consider serious consequences," warned Pinglebopper. "Granted, the guy's down 30 pounds and doesn't look like a grinning corpse anymore, but he's still got the demons. Did you see his head during that press availability? Spinning like a goddamn top. Like a top."

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor