WASHINGTON: US comedians and satirists have seized upon Vice President Dick Cheney’s quail hunting accident, in which he fired shotgun pellets at a lawyer friend Harry Whittington.

Here are some of the talk show jokes, news headlines and blog comments about Cheney:

David Letterman on his talk show

— “Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: it’s Dick Cheney.”

— “Here is the sad part. Before the trip, Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy’s request for body armoUr.”

— “The guy who got gunned down ... he is a Republican lawyer and big Republican donor, and fortunately, the buckshot was deflected by wads of laundered cash.”

Jay Leno on his talk show

— “When people heard he shot a lawyer, his popularity in now 92 per cent.”

— “When the ambulance got there, out of the force of the habit they put Cheney on the stretcher.”

— “I think also Cheney is starting to lose it. After he shot the guy, he screamed: ‘Anyone else wants to call domestic wiretapping illegal?’”

— “And here is something I just found out today about the incident. You didn’t know this. Turns out Cheney tortured the guy for half an hour before he shot him.”

— “The guy Cheney shot was wearing a bright orange hat and orange jacket. Cheney said he thought it was a gay quail.”

— Jon Stewart on his satirical “The Daily Show”

Stewart recalled that Aaron Burr was the last vice president to shoot someone when he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804: “Alexander Hamilton, of course, was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honour, integrity and political manoeuvring. Whittington was mistaken for a bird.”

— Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio show presenter

“Would you rather go hunting with Dick Cheney or riding in a car over a bridge with Ted Kennedy?”

— New York Daily News tabloid’s headline: “Duck, It’s Dick”:

Andy Borowitz on his political blog ww.borowitzreport.com

— “Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the man he sprayed with pellets on Saturday was not Ayman al-Zawahiri (the Al Qaeda leader) but rather Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, blaming the mix-up on “faulty intelligence”.—AFP