Dick Cheney Hunting Accident

Expanding our mandate just a smidgen, here's video of Vice President Dick Cheney lurking in the bushes behind Bush. And, naturally, scowling.

Via this we learn the VP Dick Cheney will be traveling to Australia and Japan this month. Whether he'll be bringing armaments along isn't known, but he will be making a side-trip to Tasmania to do some fly-fishing. Hang on to your hats! Better yet, wear body armor in case he decides to unleash a fussilade of barbed hooks into the air.

Vice President Dick Cheney's first hunting trip since shooting Harry Whittington in the face on February 11, 2006 will take place this coming Tuesday, November 7. That, of course, is the day of the midterm elections.

The trip will be at a private hunting lodge outside Pierre, South Dakota. It's at least his fourth trip to the state do go hunting; in 2003 he'd already made three trips.

He'll apparently be hunting the rink-necked pheasant, which is SD's state bird. While closely related to quail, they are not as tall and no pheasants have ever been known to be elderly lawyers. Whether any Democrats were invited on the trip is not known.

November 11 UPDATE: At this point it's clear that Cheney didn't have another hunting accident. Either that, or the coverup this time was better.

From this week's issue:

...After searching for his birds for a bit, Whittington returned to the vehicle where Katharine Armstrong was. She "told him to go and shoot the second covey," the report says. Whittington walked toward Cheney and Willeford but, as Armstrong later told reporters, didn't announce his presence. "Your first responsibility is to let the other guy know where you are," says Texas A&M professor Dale Rollins, a quail-hunting expert. But Cheney too had a responsibility to know where Whittington was. "It's critical, especially with more than two hunters, to stay in a straight line," says Rollins. Cheney turned toward the setting sun to fire at a bird from the covey Medellin had discovered--and that was the shot that felled Whittington. The ambulance that always accompanies Cheney took his friend to a small hospital 42 miles north, and he was then flown to a big Corpus Christi medical center...

Cheney was in for a fitful evening; he was "just crushed," another guest told the New York Times. The paper says the hunting party somberly ate roast beef for dinner and got periodic reports from two guests who had gone to the hospitals along with Whittington's wife Mercedes. The Secret Service notified local authorities, and a traveling aide to the Vice President gave a heads-up to the White House Situation Room. Bush adviser Karl Rove called Armstrong between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. to ask about Whittington--who, like Armstrong, is a friend of Rove's--and learned of Cheney's role in the accident...

At about 8 a.m. Sunday, a Cheney aide called strategist Mary Matalin, who regularly advises the Vice President. The aide read her a statement about the accident that Cheney had considered releasing before he decided to encourage Armstrong to go to the Caller-Times. But the statement "didn't say much of anything," Matalin says--not even that Cheney was the shooter. Matalin then spoke with a second aide and with Cheney's family and heard different versions of what had happened in the shooting. She decided no statement should be released amid the confusion. Matalin spoke with Cheney, and, she says, they agreed that "a fuller accounting, with an eyewitness," would be preferable...

The Time cover story is on the Dick Cheney hunting accident. The article is subscriber-only, but a snippet is here, with a bit more here.

There are a lot of links about the incident here. One of those is certainly "interesting": last year the Larouchians published "Cheney Is on the Way Out!".

The AP has a roundup, with these sections:
BLAME
DRINKING
VICTIM'S CONDITION
LICENSE
DISCLOSURE
TELLING WASHINGTON

During his interview with Brit Hume (the transcript of which can be found easily on the Internets), Cheney said that when the accident occurred, he was hunting near one other hunter (obviously Pam Willeford) and a guide (probably Bo Hubert) and/or an "outrigger." Cheney was on the group's "far right." (Or so he thought. In fact, unbeknownst to him, Whittington to was to his right.) The setting sun was to the group's right (which can only mean they were facing south).

Cheney told Hume that a quail then went up and flew towards the west. Cheney took aim at the bird, then pulled the trigger, shooting towards the sun (the west), inadvertently hitting Whittington.

Persons hearing this Hume interview probably assumed (very reasonably) that Cheney, while following the bird, had simply turned to his right (clockwise) and spun perhaps 90 degrees before pulling the trigger.

But look at the police report that summarizes Deputy San Miguel's brief 2/12/06 interview of Cheney. (It's posted at the Smoking Gun Web site.) That reports indicates Cheney told the deputy that the quail went up "behind" him, and he then turned in a "counter clockwise direction" before shooting at the bird.

Assuming Cheney told Hume the truth, and assuming Cheney told the deputy the truth, and assuming the deputy accurately recorded what Cheney had told him, then the only logical conclusion we can reach is that Cheney, while following the quail, turned to his left, then spun around about 270 degrees before shooting low towards the west, striking Whittington.

The fact that Whittington got hit on the right side of his face and neck seems to corroborate, not contradict, this 270-degree spin theory. Allow me to explain. If Willeford, Cheney, and Whittington were standing in a roughly east-west line, facing south, with Willeford to Cheney's left and Whittington to Cheney's right, and if a quail then goes up behind Cheney, and if Whittington then hears and/or sees (out of the corner of his eye) the quail, his natural reaction would be to turn his head (if not his whole body) to his left roughly 135 degrees (three-quarters of a half turn) so that he would then be looking directly at the quail behind Cheney. Such a turn would expose the right side of his face to Cheney. If the quail then flew in Whittington's direction, and if Cheney pulled the trigger just as the quail was flying in front of or behind Whittington, Cheney's birdshot would hit the right side of Whittington's face and neck.

From a hunting-safety point of view, Cheney's biggest gaffe was pulling the trigger without first making sure there was no person in his line of fire. But the 270-degree spin that he apparently made just before he pulled the trigger was nearly as big a gaffe. It was reckless. It was a gross violation of an important hunting-safety rule: when hunting with others, don't spin to the point where you are pointing your gun at one or more of your companions. As Cheney made his 270-degree counterclockwise spin, he almost certainly pointed his loaded shotgun at Willeford and the guide and/or outrigger, thus placing them in danger, at least momentarily.

In case you know the name, keep reading anyway. Tearing a page from MythBusters, he conducted shotgun ballistics tests and claims that Harry Whittington was shot at close range, between 15 and 18 feet. There's even a 10 minute video.

(Via this)

As the Harry Whittington picture shows, he was hit on his right side. However, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department report shows him having been hit on his left side.

Huh?

(Via this)