Bush jokes Cheney is "Darth Vader"

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush joked Wednesday that Vice President Dick Cheney, sometimes caricatured as Darth Vader, did not need a costume to play the sinister "Star Wars" villain for Halloween.

"This morning I was with the vice president. I was asking him what costume he was planning. And he said 'I'm already wearing it.' Then he mumbled something about 'the dark side of the Force," Bush quipped.

Cheney himself has repeatedly joked publicly about his portrayal as the black-armored Dark Lord of the Sith, most recently in an October 21 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East policy.

"I've been asked if that nickname bothers me, and the answer is, no. After all, Darth Vader is one of the nicer things I've been called recently," the...