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WASHINGTON — President George Bush only attempted to attack the Middle East and assemble forces along the United States and Mexico border while playing the classic board game Risk this week.

Although the president has been an avid fan of the game for years, White House staffers point to his complete misunderstanding of the rules as his major downfall.

“You can’t liberate the Middle East or Afghanistan unless your pieces are adjacent to that territory,” said Marcus Detwiller, White House public relations assistant. “He keeps trying to attack those regions from the Eastern United States, which is completely illegal, and he’s always mumbling about eliminating weapons of mass destruction that are hidden there.”

The president often clashes with Detwiller over disagreements about rules of engagement and war strategy when they play.

“My extremist opponent wants to challenge my way of playing the game. He wants to scare me into playing by his rules and his ideals and deny he houses weapons of immorality,” said President Bush. “I am the decider, and I have to get the [nuclear] arsenal out of the hands of evildoers.”

Expert players point to Bush’s lack of basic strategy as the major reason he consistently loses games.

“He always amasses troops on the border with Mexico, even if he already controls all of North America,” said George Kypreos, 2007 Canadian Risk champion. “That’s just bad strategy, period.”

Bush responded to the champion’s comments by saying that a Canadian or anyone of French decent has no place in a discussion of defense tactics, reminding Kypreos of his vast military resources and threatening to guard the Canadian border aggressively if the two ever clash in a Risk battle.

As amassing troops along the Mexican border depletes his forces, the American president frequently cites his large war budget as a reason he should be awarded additional troops after each of his turns, violating the troop replenishment process stated in the game’s published rulebook.

“We usually just give him permission to go ahead and use the extra troops,” said Laura Bush, wife and occasional Risk opponent. “They don’t help him win. He just gets them killed.”

“Fortunately, it’s just a game,” Bush said after a recent drubbing at the hands of White House intern. “In real life you don’t have to strategize and form allegiances to gain world domination.”

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