Shooter Slips on a Silencer
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 by billFrom NY Times
By Maureen Dowd
Who did this old guy think he was, coming between Dick Cheney and his helpless prey?
The luckless 78-year-old Texas lawyer, Harry Whittington, is in intensive care after a heart attack, with up to 200 pellets riddling his face and body — one stuck in his heart — from Dick Cheney’s designer Perazzi Brescia shotgun. And still his friend, the vice president, is Swift-BB-ing him.
Private citizens have been enlisted to blame the victim. Maybe poor Mr. Whittington put himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was, after all, behind Vice, not in front of him. And the hunter pulling the trigger is supposed to make sure he has a clear shot. Wouldn’t it be, well, classy for Shooter to express just a bit of contrition and humility?
Instead, the usual sliming has begun, with the Cheney camp trying to protect the vice president by casting a veteran hunter as Elmer Dud.
Scott McClellan told the White House press corps that Katharine Armstrong, a lobbyist with government ties who owns the Texas ranch (and whose mother, Anne, was on the Halliburton board that hired Mr. Cheney as C.E.O.), “pointed out that the protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington when it came to notifying the others that he was there.”
As the story of the weekend’s bizarre hunting accident is wrenched out of the White House, the picture isn’t pretty: With American soldiers dying in Iraq, Five-Deferment Dick “I Had Other Priorities in the 60’s Than Military Service” Cheney gets his macho kicks gunning down little birds and the occasional old man while W. rides his bike, blissfully oblivious to any collateral damage. Shouldn’t these guys work on weekends until we figure out how to fix Iraq, New Orleans, Medicare and gas prices?
This version of “The Most Dangerous Game” neatly follows the four-step Bush-Cheney cycle:
Step 1: Set out to pick off what you think is an easy target, like quail — in 2003, he went after stocked, pen-raised and netted pheasant — or a certain sanction-caged Iraqi dictator.
Step 2: In the corrupt company of lobbyist-contractor friends, botch things up. Ignore the peril at hand — as with, oh, Osama at Tora Bora, or Katrina, or the Iraq occupation — and with steely resolve, indulge your raging incompetence. (Oops.)
Step 3: Stonewall. Resist giving Congress information about 9/11 or Katrina; don’t tell the public how you’re tapping phones at home, setting up gulags abroad and making war and energy policy in secret. Why give the taxpayers, who are ponying up for these weekend hunting trips, the extraordinary news that Vice shot his hunting companion in the face and chest? Scott McClellan knew before yesterday’s White House briefing at noon that Mr. Whittington was worse, but did not tell the reporters. He left that to Corpus Christi doctors, who spun the heart attack as “an inflammatory response to a metallic foreign BB.”
Step 4: Admit no mistakes. Express sympathy. Blame the victim without leaving fingerprints by outsourcing the smear to the private sector.
Trent Lott joked in a meeting yesterday that Mr. Cheney was now the “shooter in chief,” while other wags noted that Quayle was always a problem for Bushes.
Presidential staff members and lawmakers speculated yesterday about whether Shooter would resign and make room for Condi if Mr. Whittington did not survive. His death would trigger a more thorough police investigation and probably a grand jury.
“Are you crazy?” one Republican senator told a reporter. “He’d never quit.” (Aaron Burr presided over the Senate after he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel.)
The shooter in chief can’t quit because he is the administration. Who’d even tell him to quit? If necessary, he’d probably make W. take the fall.
Despite efforts by Mr. McClellan to joke and urge reporters to get back to “the pressing priorities of the American people,” the hunting debacle once more showed Mr. Cheney running the imperial show.
He didn’t talk to the sheriff for 14 hours, or even call the president to notify him after the 5:50 p.m. accident. Vice left that to Andy Card, who called Mr. Bush at 7:30 p.m. to say there had been a hunting accident, without mentioning that Vice was the gunman. Soon after that, Karl Rove called Mr. Bush back with that little detail.
A reporter, surprised, pressed Mr. McClellan: “The vice president did not call the president to tell him he was the shooter?”
Usually when there’s a White House cover-up, the president’s in on it.
[...] You knew Maureen Dowd would have something to say about The Incident. Today’s column (via True Blue Liberal) doesn’t disappoint, as she describes the “swift-BB-ing” of Harry Whittington. Private citizens have been enlisted to blame the victim. Maybe poor Mr. Whittington put himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was, after all, behind Vice, not in front of him. And the hunter pulling the trigger is supposed to make sure he has a clear shot. Wouldn’t it be, well, classy for Shooter to express just a bit of contrition and humility? [...]
Let’s see–someone approaches Cheney with a loaded gun, from the rear, with the secret service watching, the shot is fired, the old man is down, bleeding, 3 hours elapse before he’s airlifted to a hospital, no one tells president or news corps (why wasn’t the photographer there for an obvious photo-op?), local sheriff’s deputy not allowed to see Cheney to take blood test for alcohol, sheriff claims that therefore alcohol not involved, meanwhile, victim is blamed for stopping the bullet, is described as very stable–yet in icu, then has heart attack, possibly caused by a pellet from the estimated 6-200 pellets (kinda rough estimate) in his body, Cheney quits the scene and the state asap. Where would I be if I were the shooter?–in jail or at his bedside praying the poor bastard doesn’t die?
Has anyone looked into the two women who were on the hunting trip with Cheney? It appeared there were two women and two men – none married to each other. Could that be part of the reason for a “cover-up”?
Barbara Jenkins
It’s nothing that a supply of male enhancement pills won’t resolve!
For speculation on the women who may have been on the hunting trip, see earlier TBL post “Was Cheney Hiding His Lewinsky?”
If the shoe were on the other foot, and Cheney had been shot by a fellow hunter, the shooter would have been held by federal authorities, tested for blood-alcohol and other drugs, then a psychological evaluation to determine sanity and intent to kill or injure. The news would have made headlines before Cheney even made it to a hospital. The news would be filled with minute-to-minute updates about Cheney’s health and no-doubt following a heart attack, there would be emergency surgery to remove the pellet lodged close to his heart. There would have been an enormous public out-pouring of sympathy for Cheney, which would boost his poll-numbers and over-shadow any criticism of the administration. The shooter and his family would be making public statements of apologies and grief/remorse for endangering his life. The shooter would also have every tiny detail of his life exposed in the news media and there would be endless speculation as to whether this was intentional or criminal negligence. Eventually there would be a hearing and criminal charges levied. Can you imagine Condolleza Rice temporarily filling-in for the ailing Vice President? In short, things could be much worse.
Sympathy for Cheney? Talk about “Sympathy for the Devil”
These “Gangsta Cheney” T-shirts say it all…
http://www.cafepress.com/mccam/1206788