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Unresolved questions in the Cheney shooting incident

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Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:22:03 -0800 (PST)

Unresolved questions in the Cheney shooting incident

 

 

 

 

http://www.asiantribune.com/show_article.php?id=3014

 

Date : 2006-02-16

Unresolved questions in the Cheney shooting incident

 

By Patrick Martin – World Socialist Web Site -

 

Last Saturday, Vice President Dick Cheney, an experienced hunter, was

hunting quail with several well-heeled Republican acquaintances,

including Texas lawyer Harry Whittington. The two men had been

drinking throughout the afternoon, and at one point began to quarrel

about a business venture of mutual interest which had gone awry. The

argument became heated. Whittington sneered at Cheney's declining

public standing and the most recent disclosure, by Cheney's former

chief of staff Lewis Libby, that Libby had leaked classified

information to the press at Cheney's direction. When Cheney responded

with an obscenity-laced remark, Whittington, a man who knows where

many bodies are buried in Texas politics and business, suggested he

might arrange for certain facts of a sensitive nature to become public

knowledge. Cheney, enraged, stormed away, then turned, lowered his

shotgun and discharged it, hitting Whittington's face and upper body.

 

Is that what happened on February 14 at the Armstrong Ranch in

southern Texas? We have no idea, but it is no less likely than the

official explanation. And the " angry drunk " scenario would more

plausibly explain both the long delay in reporting the event—which

made it conveniently impossible to perform the blood alcohol test that

would otherwise be routine in such an incident—and the obvious

disarray in the White House for days afterwards.

 

For all the media attention to the Cheney affair, it is remarkable

that with virtual unanimity the official claim that the shooting was

accidental has been uncritically accepted and reported as though it

were established fact, despite the lack of any serious investigation

or public presentation of the actual circumstances in which the vice

president of the United States shot and seriously wounded another man.

 

Until the migration of one of the shotgun pellets lodged in

Whittington's body triggered a heart attack on Tuesday, the incident

was largely dismissed with joking references to the " gang that

couldn't shoot straight " or criticism of a poor White House

communications strategy. Even after the shift to a more serious tone,

the major daily newspapers and the television networks continue to

refer to the incident as an " accidental shooting, " without either

interviewing eyewitnesses or investigating any alternative theory of

what took place.

 

With Cheney's interview Wednesday evening on Fox television, two

conflicting accounts of the shooting have now been given. Kathleen

Armstrong, daughter of multimillionaire ranch owner Anne Armstrong, a

former ambassador in the Reagan administration, contacted a Corpus

Christi, Texas newspaper Sunday to report Whittington had been shot

accidentally. She put the responsibility for the incident on

Whittington, indicating that he had wandered off the line maintained

by his hunting partners and failed to announce himself when he

returned from retrieving a quail.

 

Three days later, Cheney abandoned the " blame the victim " story and

told Fox interviewer Britt Hume that he was the one responsible

because he had pulled the trigger.

 

Cheney also admitted to having a drink earlier that day, although he

said it was only a single beer at lunch, five hours before the

shooting. He denied that any alcohol was being consumed on the hunt.

 

Cheney made an even more damaging admission, remarking that he " didn't

know until Sunday morning that Harry was going to be all right. " This

throws a different light on the decision not to make public any

information about the shooting for nearly a full day.

 

During that period, when Cheney and his aides could not be sure

whether the vice president might be facing involuntary manslaughter

charges, there were undoubtedly discussions about how to handle the

story—perhaps even consideration of whether someone else might have to

take the fall for the shooting. Only after Whittington was out of

immediate danger was the press contacted with the news that Cheney had

been the shooter.

 

The police were also kept away during the first critical half-day.

Secret Service agents contacted the local sheriff's department

immediately to report a shooting accident, but there is no indication

that they supplied any details or identified the shooter.

 

A captain in the sheriff's department went to the ranch Saturday

evening but was told the victim had been transported to a hospital in

Corpus Christi. He left without interviewing any eyewitness.

 

Two local policemen also arrived at the ranch, after learning of the

shooting, but they were denied admission by ranch security guards, and

went their way. Finally, at 8 a.m. Sunday—after Cheney had been

assured that Whittington would survive—the vice president was

interviewed by a sheriff's deputy and made his first declaration that

he had pulled the trigger.

 

What is known about the circumstances of the shooting cast some doubt

on the accident theory, especially given Cheney's long experience as a

hunter and the relative rarity of such incidents—only a handful during

the most recent Texas hunting season.

 

According to the account Cheney gave to Fox, Whittington was partially

obscured because he was standing in a gully lower than the ground on

which Cheney was standing. This suggests that Cheney, in order to hit

Whittington, would have had to fire his blast either level or slightly

downwards—a strange angle for shooting at a flushed quail rising into

the sky.

 

Press accounts suggest that Whittington was hit by as many as 150 to

200 pellets, meaning that he received nearly the full charge of

birdshot from a single blast. This fact and the nature of the wounds

seem to confirm the reports that Whittington was standing about 30

yards from Cheney when the vice president opened fire: any closer, and

the wounds would have been far more serious; much further away, and

dispersion would have caused many of the shot pellets to miss.

 

There are other aspects of the incident which appear to undercut the

" pure accident " theory. How could such an accident occur when the vice

president was accompanied by his normal entourage of Secret Service

and medical personnel?

 

The role of the Secret Service is particularly puzzling: if

Whittington was in range of Cheney's gun, then Cheney was likewise in

range of Whittington's. How could the Secret Service have been unaware

that a man armed with a loaded shotgun was approaching the vice

president from an unexpected direction? If they were aware of

Whittington's movements, how could they have allowed the vice

president to open fire on him?

 

Whittington's turn for the worse on Tuesday morning raises the

possibility that he could suffer long-term physical consequences from

the shooting, or even death. In either event, Cheney could be liable

for criminal charges involving at least negligence and recklessness,

or even involuntary manslaughter, a felony charge never before brought

against so high-ranking a public official. His continuation in office

under such circumstances would be in question.

 

The press, however, has been virtually silent on this possibility. It

has focused almost entirely on the subsequent handling of the public

relations fallout, not on the underlying event in which a man was

nearly killed by the vice president.

 

In a rare exception, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, in a

commentary Wednesday devoted to the exposure of illegal NSA spying,

remarked in passing: " Nobody died at Armstrong Ranch, but this

incident reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy's delay in informing

Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile

accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969. That story, and dozens of others

about the Kennedy family, illustrates how wealthy, powerful people can

behave as if they are above the law. "

 

The comparison is an apt one, not only in its implicit questioning of

the credibility of the account given by Cheney, but in its reference

to the seeming immunity of the top echelons of American society from

all normal legal and social constraints. There is indeed one law for

the masses of ordinary people and quite another for the financial and

political elite. If anything, this is more the case in the far more

socially polarized America of 2006 than it was nearly four decades ago.

 

Cheney's four-day silence demonstrated the vice president's arrogant

indifference to public opinion. His eventual decision to give an

interview with Fox News expresses both contempt for the public's right

to know and personal cowardice—Cheney is willing to be questioned only

by a network which has repeatedly demonstrated a slavish political

loyalty to the Bush administration and its ultra-right policies.

 

The rejection of accountability—for the 9/11 attacks, for the lies

which were used to engineer the war with Iraq, for the failures in the

response to Hurricane Katrina, for the devastating social and fiscal

impact of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy—is the hallmark not only of

an administration, but of the ruling elite as a whole.

 

In that sense, Cheney's conduct at the Armstrong Ranch and its

presentation by the media provide a vivid example of the social

relations that prevail in contemporary America, ruled by a financial

oligarchy that feels itself as far above the common people as the

Russian Tsar or the French aristocracy before 1789. There is one set

of laws, one set of prerogatives for the modern equivalent of the

ruling estates of the feudal past, and another for the rabble.

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/cheneys-chappaquiddick-i_b_15711.html

 

CHENEY WAS DRINKING AND WITH ANOTHER WOMAN

 

RJ Eskow

 

Bio

 

02.15.2006

 

Cheney's Chappaquiddick II: The Real Story Emerges (79

comments )

READ MORE: Google, Dick Cheney, 2006, George W. Bush

The real story is already emerging, if you're willing

to do a little digging. Cheney and Whittington went

hunting with two women (not their wives), there was

some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot.

Armstrong didn't see the incident but claimed she had,

Cheney refused to be questioned by the Sheriff until

the next morning, and a born-again evangelical

physician has been downplaying Whittington's injuries

since they occurrred.

 

Neither the press nor law enforcement seems inclined

to investigate.

 

Before the right-wing commenters howl - there's

documentation for all of these statements. Let's take

them one by one: In addition to Cheney and

Whittington, the hunting party included Katherine

Armstrong (who was in the car at the time of the

shooting: more on that later). After lots of evasive

comments that only referred to a " third hunter, " we

now know her identity: Pamela Willeford, the US

Ambassador to Switzerland.

 

Then there was this Armstrong quote on MSNBC and

picked up by Firedoglake (later dutifully scrubbed,

but preserved on Google cache): " There may be a beer

or two in there, " (Armstrong) said, 'but remember not

everyone in the party was shooting.' "

 

Interestingly, Armstrong's playing with words here.

She later said that she (Armstrong) hadn't had

anything to drink, so at least one of the other three

must have been drinking - and the other three were

shooting. So while her statement was literally correct

( " not everyone ... was shooting " ), it gives the false

impression that nobody drank and shot.

 

Then there was this item (courtesy kos):

 

 

Armstrong said she saw Cheney's security detail

running toward the scene. " The first thing that

crossed my mind was he had a heart problem, " she told

The Associated Press.

In other words, she didn't see the accident. All of

her statements, replete with colorful sidebars about

getting " peppered pretty good, " gave the false

impression she was an eyewitness. She wasn't.

 

And what about Dr. David Blanchard, who made such

light of Whittington's injuries? Before the heart

attack occurred, Blanchard gave no indication that

pellets had entered Whittington's torso or major

organs (we now know that at least one other pellet

entered his liver). I found an interesting quote.

After asserting that spiritual beliefs help people

recover more quickly (which studies have suggested may

be true), Blanchard said this of people with out of

body and near death experiences:

 

 

" These people do quite well in their disease

processes, " he said. " The Lord wasn't quite ready for

them yet . . . It makes believers out of them. "

It's likely that Blanchard is also the same " Dr. David

Blanchard " who is listed as Vice Chairperson of World

Hope International, a Christian evangelical aid group.

 

 

Blanchard's certainly entitled to his own beliefs, and

World Hope International (if he's the same Blanchard)

has done some good work, albeit with a proselytizing

bent. But most evangelicals in this country are ardent

supporters of the Bush/Cheney Administration. This may

explain the otherwize puzzling word choices Dr.

Blanchard made to play down Whittington's injuries,

especially before the heart attack made that more

difficult to do.

 

So was Cheney drinking, and was there anything

inappropriate about this hunting party? We don't know,

and nobody's investigating. There's reason to be

suspicious. We do have the suggestion that drinking

was taking place, we have inconsistencies and a

pattern of deception in Armstrong's statements, we

have a shooting injury that's far more serious than

originally claimed ... and a Sheriff's Department and

national press that have already proclaimed the VP

innocent of all wrongdoing.

 

I was right to call this Cheney's Chappaquiddick. The

parallels get stronger every day. Of course,

Chappaquiddick happened almost forty years ago, and

Ted Kennedy's turned his personal life around.

Cheney's actions happened this weekend. There's reason

to be suspicious of the Vice President's behavior,

starting with the cover-up itself.

 

They're trying to spin it as just a badly handled case

of press relations, but it's could be a whole lot more

than that.

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