I don't know who wrote this, but I think it is well-said.
Dear World:
The United States of America, your quality supplier of the
ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its
2001-2008 service outage. The glitch that led to this eight-year
service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible
for it were replaced Tuesday night, November 4. Early tests of the
newly-installed equipment indicate that it is functioning
correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by mid to late
January. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage,
and we look forward to resuming full service,
and hopefully to improving it in years to come.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
The USA