Hey, let's like pop a cap in Hugo Chavez!

Relations between the US and Venezuela were last week at their lowest point since the 1963 attempt by the Kennedy government to remove the South American sun-kissed paradise's president by flooding the country with right-wing expats armed with exploding cigars and poisoned bananas, after TV evangelist Pat Robertson told viewers that — as far as God was concerned at least — the United States would do well to pop a cap in overnourished commie agitator Hugo Chavez.

Robertson told his rapt audience of bible-bashers and alleluia merchants that, in light of Chavez's repeated insistence that the US administration was trying to kill him: "I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

This shocking comment provoked immediate condemnation across the US. The Reverent Jesse Jackson — emerging from a Mississippi plastic surgeon's looking every bit the youthful Diana Ross — said he hoped to travel soon to Brazil where the transformation into his idol would be complete. He told scrumming newscrews: "I have a two-day stop-over in Caracas to buy beachwear. Hopefully I'll be able to pop in a give Hugo a big hug."

US God Squad supremo (WASP division), Rev Ted Haggard, immediately trumped Jackson by declaring he would apologise in person for Robertson's comments. "The US of A does not assassinate. Smite, yes, but assassinate no. And I have that on the highest possible authority," intoned Haggard as he boarded a battle bus en route to a witch pressing in Utah. Questioned as to when exactly he had spoken to His Lord on the matter of political assassination, Haggard patiently explained that while he did not exactly have a "hot line" to the Almighty, "little Donnie Rumsfeld is in continual contact with the Holy Trinity from a small chapel buried beneath the Pentagon". This was later confirmed by an ecclesiastical foreign policy expert who explained that "this is why Rumsfeld know the war in Iraq is Right™, and that anyone who disagrees is just plain Wrong™.

The US State Department, meanwhile, confirmed the administration's commitment to not assassinating irritating individuals abroad. A spokesman, speaking on condition that we did not mention* the 1984 attempted killing of Sandinista-turned-Contra Eden Pastora in Costa Rica in which a bomb dispatched three journalists to the hereafter, told The Rockall Times: "This is getting to a real pain in the ass. We do not at present have any plans to remove Chavez by force, although if provoked, we reserve the right to protect evangelical missionaries working in Venezuela by means of a 'defensory penetrative relief program'." When asked to clarify what exactly this might involve, our source concluded: "It's a bit of a Bay of Pigs type scenario, but with a happy ending with everyone standing on the top of a hill outside Caracas singing that really cool Coca Cola song in perfect harmony."

For his part, Chavez is having none of it. He appeared on Venezuelan state TV — audaciously interrupting the final, climactic episode of long-running soap sensation Pasión y Puerco (Passion and Pork), a steamy colonial-period potboiler chronicling the forbidden love between the son of a Brazil nut plantation cacique and the lowly, yet busty, daughter of the estate's swineherd amid the burgeoning cries for liberation and justice — to point out for the benefit of ambulance-chasing lawyers that if he popped his clogs it would be president Bush's fault.

"If I die it will be president Bush's fault," insisted Chavez, leaving no-one in any doubt whatsoever who he held responsible for his as-yet unplanned demise. Chavez then went on to blame the United States for absolutely everything else, from bird flu to "Tiger" Tim Henman's repeated failure to secure a Wimbledon men's single title.

Speaking later to our Rockall Times' Caracas bureau chief in the comfort of the presidential Che Guevara memorial lounge, a charming Chavez, pausing only to close the French windows to shut out the sound of rioting reformists clashing with armed police, offered: "If anything happens to me then the man responsible will be George W Bush. He will be the assassin." The president then broke off to offer our man an enormous Cuban cigar which he had previously dipped in top-grade Venezuelan crude oil and rubbed along the thighs of a Cuban virgin who, he brightly explained, "was a present from my old pal Fidel".

Chavez's face at this point suddenly darkened, not as a result of his anger at US "terrorism", but because his cigar had unexpectedly exploded. He quickly kissed a picture of former Chilean president Salvador Allende, made his apologies, and rushed from the room armed with a pistol.

*Editorial note

Shortly after publication of this piece we received an angry call from our State Department source in which he thundered: "Hey, guys, I specifically asked you not to mention the CIA-organised plot to assassinate Eden Pastora. I'm really, really pissed now, so you'd better watch your goddam limey asses."

Previously

• Fergie blows gasket at Venezuela anarchy
• Bush hits Inca trail in War on Terror™
• Latin America in street name panic