WASHINGTON, DC - In a shocking address today, President George W.
Bush entreated Indian Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee to change
his country's name to "Native America."
 
The President's request came on the heels of a late-night campaign stop at
the Mohegan Sun casino, where Bush learned firsthand that the nomenclature
"Indian," as well as the slang term "Injun," is considered offensive by
many tribe members.
 
Immediately after his return to the Oval Office, Bush personally
supervised the reassignment of several members of his senior staff from
the war on terror to a blue ribbon panel tasked with remediating the
problems of the Indian people.  One aide, speaking on condition of
anonymity, quoted Bush as saying, "as we have said before, this war on
terror will last many, many years.  So there's no reason we can't pull a
few people off of it for a while to solve a simple problem."
 
The President is said to have taken the Indian people's desire for proper
identification personally, having taken great offense at being mistaken
for his father and a monkey in a popular children's book, both also named
George.
 
Although several of his advisors suggested that Bushs unprecedented direct
request of the Indian Prime Minister was "excessive," and "unnecessary,"
the President insisted that it was the least he could do.
 
"In these trombactic times," he said, "there is nothing more important
than sensitivity towards other cultures, even if these other cultures are
your own.  This is why I ask Prime Minister Vajpayee to realize that
referring to both his people and his country as Indian is offensible, and
that the only true solution is to change his countrys name back to 'Native
America.'"
 
President Bush even went so far as to tie his suggestion to a possible
solution to the increasingly dangerous climate of brinksmanship on the
Indo-Pakistani border.  "The so-called 'Indians' and Pakistanleys," he
explained, "refer to this conflict over Kashmir as a struggle for national
identity.  "What else," asked President Bush, "could make a nation willing
to risk nuclear war over a simple fabric?"
 
At the urging of President Bush's advisors, Prime Minister Vajpayee had no
immediate response to the request.  Seemingly emboldened by the awestruck
audience, however, President Bush mentioned afterwards that he might also
ask the Prime Minister of Holland to consider changing his nation's name
to Dutch.