World  - The US television network HBO and the producers of the TV show "Game of Thrones" have apologized for putting a prosthetic head of former US President George W. Bush on a spike on program.

The scene with Bush's severed head on a spike was first broadcast in 2011 and featured on the DVD released in March 2012. Bush's head was one of many other heads on spikes in the scene where King Joffrey shows his fiancée the severed head of her disloyal father.

Bush's features on the prosthetic head were somewhat obscured by long, curly hair and the image appears only briefly. Yet in the DVD commentary, producers Dan Weiss and David Benioff identified the head as being a likeness of Bush.

On Thursday, Weiss and Benioff apologized and gave an explanation.

"We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc.," Benioff and Weiss said. "We can't afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush."

"In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former president and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise," the producers said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in a statement issued by HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer on Thursday, the network said, "We find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste."

Although the network is aghast, pundits say people who have experienced the US war machine in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and many other places may be somewhat amused.