Hmm, it would be interesting to look up the threads on that and see what people are saying about that accidental shooting.
it's one thing for people on a message board or late night tv to make jokes, but that is in poor taste considering the fact mc clellan knew he had a heart attack.
to be fair "face the nation" mentioned the accident at 9:30AM H-town time, not central. where they got it from I have no idea.
Do you think Cheney had been drinking and that was the delay. Just speculation since he does have a history of drinking (sorry if this has been posted, didn't read all the pages)
There's been some speculation. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/was-cheney-drunk_b_15646.html 02.14.2006 Was Cheney Drunk? The L.A. Times is edging closer to the most likely reason for the 18 hour delay in reporting that the Vice President of the United States shot someone: "This was a hunting accident," said Gilbert San Miguel, chief deputy of the Kenedy County Sheriff's Office. "There was no alcohol or misconduct." How do we know there was no alcohol? Cheney refused to talk to local authorities until the next day. No point in giving him a breathalyzer then. Every lawyer I've talked to assumes Cheney was too drunk to talk to the cops after the shooting. The next question for the White House should be: Was Cheney drunk? I have never gone hunting with ultra-rich Republicans on a Saturday afternoon, but I have seen them tailgating at Ivy League football games, so it's hard for me to believe that any of their Saturday lunches are alcohol free.
link Cheney's companion at fault in shooting, White House saysBy William DouglasKnight Ridder NewspapersWASHINGTON - The White House blamed the 78-year-old man whom Vice President Dick Cheney shot during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas for the incident, as officials struggled Monday to explain why they waited nearly 24 hours before making the news public. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan tried to absolve Cheney of blame for shooting wealthy Austin lawyer Harry Whittington, saying that hunting "protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington when it came to notifying others that he was there. And so, you know, unfortunately, these types of hunting accidents happen from time to time." Several hunting experts were skeptical of McClellan's explanation. They said Cheney might have violated a cardinal rule of hunting: Know your surroundings before you pull the trigger. "Particularly identify the game that you are shooting and particularly identify your surroundings, that it's safe to shoot," said Mark Birkhauser, the incoming president of the International Hunter Education Association, a group of fish and wildlife agencies. "Every second, you're adjusting your personal information that it is a safe area to shoot or it's not a safe area to shoot." Safe-hunting rules published by the National Rifle Association and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department echo Birkhauser's advice. "Be absolutely sure you have identified your target beyond any doubt," the NRA says in the gun-safety rules on its Web site. "Equally important, be aware of the area beyond your target. This means observing your prospective area of fire before you shoot. Never fire in a direction in which there are people or any other potential for mishap. Think first. Shoot second." On its 10 Commandments of Shooting Safety, Texas Parks and Wildlife lists being sure of your target as the third commandment. "Know what is in front and behind your target. Determine that you have a safe backstop or background." Cheney has a Texas non-resident hunting license, but he failed to get a $7 stamp that's required to hunt game birds, the vice president's office said in a statement Monday night. He has since sent a check to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to buy the stamp, the statement said. Whittington was listed in stable condition Monday at a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, with birdshot wounds to his face, neck and chest. The shooting occurred about 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Armstrong Ranch, a 50,000-acre spread in south Texas owned by friends of the president. White House and Texas law enforcement officials haven't provided a detailed account of the incident. Katharine Armstrong, one of the ranch's owners, said Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of their vehicle to shoot a covey of quail. The third member of the hunting party was the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, Pamela Willeford, a Texan and a Bush family friend. Whittington shot a bird and went to get it, breaking from Cheney and Willeford. Armstrong said Whittington then came up from behind without signaling, and as a covey flushed Cheney wheeled and fired his .28-gauge shotgun, hitting Whittington. Whittington was tended at the scene by Cheney's medical detail before being taken to the hospital by ambulance. Though the shooting happened Saturday afternoon, it didn't become public knowledge until Armstrong notified the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, her local paper, at midday Sunday. The White House then confirmed news media requests for verification. The lag between the shooting and the reporting of it prompted questions about why a private citizen, not the government, was disclosing a shooting involving the vice president. McClellan said Monday that Cheney's staff didn't immediately inform the media because the first priority was tending to Whittington's health. McClellan said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Bush around 8 p.m. Saturday that Cheney had shot Whittington, but McClellan said he himself didn't learn that Cheney was the shooter until around 6 a.m. Sunday. He said he urged Cheney's office to get the information out as quickly as possible. The news broke nationally about 3:45 p.m. EST Sunday. Lee Anne McBride, Cheney's press secretary, talked Sunday about Whittington's condition and said the vice president had spoken with him and was pleased with his condition. But she referred most questions - from the names of everyone in the hunting party to what type of weapon Cheney had fired - to Armstrong. "The vice president thought that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to go out there and provide that information to the public, which she did," McClellan said. Cheney's office has a history of not sharing information with the public. Last month, it refused to specify the nature of a foot injury for which he was given medication that caused water retention and shortness of breath and sent him to the hospital. "He's secretive by nature," said Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "It's a dumb thing for officials to do, especially someone as experienced as Cheney. Just imagine what Jon Stewart, Jay Leno and David Letterman are going to do to him for days. It's a self-inflicted wound."
This is from the Washington Post: "Some of the birdshot appears to have moved and lodged into part of his heart," Peter Banko, an administrator and spokesman for Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital, told reporters outside the Corpus Christi hospital. Banko said the birdshot "caused him to have a minor heart attack." Asked if the birdshot could move more and endanger Whittington's life, David Blanchard, emergency room chief at the hospital, said: "When birdshot is in your body, there's always the risk they can move. We'll watch very closely for any migration." He said later, however, that the single BB-like piece of birdshot is "in a fixed position" and is not expected to travel. Blanchard said he and other doctors treating Whittington feel "very strongly that all the other birdshot in him is not problematic." The number of other pieces of birdshot in Whittington's body is not known, he said, but could range anywhere from "more than five" to "less than 150 to 200." Blanchard described the incident this morning as an "atrial fibrillation," or quivering of the upper part of the heart, as a result of irritability or inflammation caused by the piece of birdshot. He also described it as a "silent or minor heart attack." The turn of events, announced in a news briefing this afternoon, injected a more serious tone into reports of the accidental shooting, which had become the subject of jokes on late-night talk shows and the Internet. Even White House spokesman Scott McClellan made light of the shooting this morning when he joked to reporters about the orange tie he was wearing and said the reason the visiting University of Texas football team was wearing orange -- the school color -- on the South Lawn was "not because they are concerned that the vice president will be there." In the only eyewitness account of Saturday's shooting to emerge so far, Katharine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch where it took place, described Whittington's injuries as minor. She said he was hit in the cheek, neck and chest by birdshot from a 28-guage shotgun when Cheney turned and fired at a quail, not realizing that Whittington was in his line of fire. Armstrong, a prominent Texas Republican and strong supporter of President Bush, told reporters that the birdshot "broke the skin." She said the shotgun blast "knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that." Blanchard said what happened to Whittington was extremely rare. He said cardiologists may see a similar case only once or twice in their lifetimes. Banko said cardiologists at the hospital were consulting with White House doctors because the doctors had first treated Whittington after Cheney accidentally shot him. Blanchard said only one piece of birdshot was causing Whittington's heart problems at the moment. "This is the only one we are concerned about," he said. He and Banko described the heart attack as "asymptomatic," meaning that Whittington did not display any symptoms of a heart attack. "We picked up an irregular heartbeat,' Blanchard said. "At no time did he ever have any chest pain." He said the incident happened around 6:30 a.m. "We knew he had some birdshot very close to the heart from the get-go," Blanchard said. However, "we're not 100 percent certain where it is," he added, explaining that doctors felt it was better to leave it alone than to operate to remove it at this point. Blanchard said Whittington's coronary arteries are clear and that "he has the heart of a much, much younger individual." According to the American Heart Association, atrial fibrillation affects about 2.2 million Americans. It happens when the heart's two small upper chambers quiver instead of beating effectively. As a result, blood can pool in the chambers and clot, potentially causing a stroke. The part I bolded might have led to the "stroke" confusion. Here's what I consider a bizarre quote from Mary Matalin: Cheney has not commented personally on the shooting or acknowledged any error. Mary Matalin, a Cheney adviser, has said that Cheney "felt badly" about the incident, but she added that "he was not careless or incautious" and did not violate any hunting rules. "He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do," Matalin said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021400990.html I guess we'll await developments. Hope the poor guy comes out of this OK. Keep D&D Civil.
He shot a man you stupid b****. The only reason as of right now that he hasn't "done anything illegal" is because the man has chosen not to press charges and hasn't died from his wounds. Sack up and admit you made an honest, albeit unfortunate, mistake Cheney, and I have no qualms with you. Quit trying to spin it. That first line was directed at Matalin, not Deckard.
ok, whittington shoots his bird and walks over to get it - how could his hunting party notice this? whittington is now walking back wearing a bright neon orange vest to the spot where he was with his hunting party. as he is walking back cheney follows a bird and shoots below the horizon line. think how low you have to shoot to hit someone only 30 yards away. the ranch owner said basically \'oh he\'s fine, just boys being boys\' :: yet he has a piece of buckshot that \"migrated\" from the barrel of cheney\'s shotgun into his heart. the ranch owner and mclellan both have clearly tried to blame whittington for what happened. mclellan and team bush start cracking jokes even though they know his wounds are much more serious then they are letting on. cheney needs to step up and be a man because clearly he is the only one at fault. what is going on with our leaders!?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/02/14/march-2006-gqs-you-don_n_15675.html The March 2006 issue of GQ magazine will run a quiz entitled “You Don’t Know Dick,” featuring trivia about Vice-President Dick Cheney. Here are some advance highlights: 5 WHAT DID HE AND FUTURE WIFE LYNNE DO ON THEIR FIRST DATE? [ A ] One malt, two straws at Nancy’s Diner in Casper [ B ] Dinner at his parents’ house the day after he broke up with his previous girlfriend of three and a half years [ C ] Dinner and a movie [ D ] Dinner and a movie, followed by some light bondage 7 NUMBER OF MILITARY DEFERMENTS CHENEY RECEIVED DURING THE VIETNAM WAR: [ A ] None [ B ] Two [ C ] Four [ D ] Five 11 TO WHAT EVENT DID CHENEY WEAR THIS OUTFIT, COMPLETE WITH HIKING BOOTS, A MONOGRAMMED PARKA, AND A SKI CAP READING “STAFF 2001”? [ A ] A fall ’03 campaign speech at the VFW in Skokie, Illinois [ B ] The sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz [ C ] A “pimps up, hos down” party at the vice presidential residence thrown in honor of the Royal Nepalese ambassador 13 WHAT WAS CHENEY’S SECRET SERVICE CODE NAME WHILE HE WAS GERALD FORD’S CHIEF OF STAFF? [ A ] Backdoor [ B ] Backseat [ C ] Bareback [ D ] Pookey 15 AFTER THE GULF WAR, HOW DID CHENEY DEFEND THE FIRST BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION NOT TO MARCH INTO BAGHDAD AND OUST SADDAM FROM POWER? [ A ] “What kind of government are you going to establish? Is it going to be a Kurdish government or a Shia government or a Sunni government…? You will have, I think, by that time lost the support of the Arab coalition that was so crucial to our operations over there.” [ B ] “The question…is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.” [ C ] Both [ D ] Neither 17 WHICH UNFRIENDLY FOREIGN COUNTRIES DID HALLIBURTON AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES DO BUSINESS WITH DURING CHENEY’S TENURE AS CEO? [ A ] Iran and Iraq [ B ] Libya and Iran [ C ] Somalia and Iraq [ D ] All of the above [ E ] None of the above 18 HOW MUCH DID BROWN & ROOT CHARGE THE U.S. ARMY FOR EACH $14.06 PIECE OF PLYWOOD IT USED IN THE BALKANS WHEN CHENEY WAS THE CEO OF ITS PARENT COMPANY, HALLIBURTON? [ A ] $14.06 [ B ] $19.99! [ C ] $85.98 [ D ] $312.49 21 TO WHOM WAS CHENEY SPEAKING WHEN HE SAID, IN 2004, “GO **** YOURSELF, SENATOR”? [ A ] Richard Durbin [ B ] Patrick Leahy [ C ] Tom Daschle [ D ] John Kerry 24 WHICH OF THESE PASSAGES IS NOT EXCERPTED FROM A LYNNE CHENEY NOVEL? [ A ] “I was still under the impression that his taste in extramarital sex ran to patrician bluebloods, the discreet wives and daughters of America’s ruling dynasties. But when I saw Romana at the top of the townhouse stairs in a flesh-colored peignoir, things fell into place.” [ B ] “He could feel her heart beneath his hands. He moved his hands slowly lower still and she arched her back to help him.… He held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the lower one might be larger.… One of her breasts now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew not how best to touch her.” [ C ] “Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will only be the two of us, and…in the evenings I shall read to you while you go work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl.” ============================================= You can find the answers by clicking the link. I left them off in case anyone wants to guess.
For you hunters out there- From 30 yards, is it likely that birdshot can become lodged in your heart? That seems a little far away to me, but I have no experience with this.
i dont claim to be an expert, but from what ive heard, he would have had to be closer - more like less then 10 yards and as close as 10 feet. at 30 yards the buckshot would have been more spread out than it was when it hit mr. whittington. also, he was using a 28 gauge, which is closer to a bb gun than an actual 12 gage shotgun. at 30 yards there is no way that the buckshot would have the velocity to go more than a few millimeters into the skin, much less get lodged in the guys heart or artery. the guns used for birdhunting are so weak that often when a bird is shot it isnt even a kill, rather just enough to ground it - either your dog kills it or you have to physically break its neck. i think the most plausible explanation is that dick dropped his gun and it discharged, hitting whittington up close. i wouldnt be too suprised if he had a couple brews in him at the time too. why did he refuse to talk to the sherriff till the next day? national security? was the sherriff known al-queda? what is with these people? - laura bush killed someone in an auto accident. cheney shoots his friend in the face, neck and chest.
