Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Jane Hamsher: Ten Questions We'd Like To See Dick Cheney Answer Tonight. 1. If you were not in fact drunk as a skunk at the time you shot a 78 year-old man in the face, Dick, why did you go to so much trouble to get MSNBC to scrub Katharine Armstong's comments about alcohol at the hunt out of their article? Boy you guys sure gets a lot of media service for that $1.6 billion a year. 2. The official story says that the buckshot migrated to Whittington's heart through the bloodstream. How did your crack medical team get the blood to flow backwards in Mr. Whittington's body such that the buckshot "sprayed into his skin" ("like little raindrops") got sucked back into the coronary artery? This story should really be eclipsing all others. 3. Did you enlist the help of Arlen Specter, author of the Warren Commission's "Magic Bullet theory," to help you out with yours? It would take some magic BB's indeed from a distance of 30 yards to ricochet back into such a tight pattern (see above). But if it's good enough for JFK, I suppose Mr. Whittington should feel honored. 4. How happy are you that the State of Texas did not handle this like they would have if you had been graced with an Hispanic surname? An indictment for manslaughter and a $20 million judgment against the ranch owner is probably nothing a white Republican boozehound such as yourself should have to worry about, after all. 5. You must be equally grateful that the former Chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Division was not only the property owner but the witness to the event. And that she was able to call the Texas Parks and Wildlife Division to come out and write up a report clearing the you of any use of drugs and alcohol before any law enforcement officer actually spoke to you. Case o'cocktail weenies to the Armstrong Ranch for her! 6. If the guards at the Armstrong Ranch didn't know to let the sherrif's office onto the property because they didn't know the shooting had happened, what did they think the ambulance was for? 7. Can you tell us if, in the future, a Texas divorcee always be responsible for deciding whether or not the American people are entitled to know that the Vice President of the United States has put an old man in the ICU? 8. Did George Bush really know what had happened on Saturday night, and was thus simply unable to control the actions of you (his boss) with regard to the press, or did you just not think he needed to know anything until Sunday morning like the obviously superfluous Scott McClellan? 9. How low will you and the rest of the Cheney Administration go to badmouth an old man who may be dying in all of this, and how long will the media cooperate? Maureen O'Dowd called the efforts of Alan Simpson, Norm Coleman and the compliant *journalists* who have engaged in "blame the stupid victim" game as both "outsourcing smear" and "Swift-bb-ing." Should we expect news of Whittington's Al-Quaeda connections soon? 10. Although the Wittington family was initially eager to give you a pass in all of this, are they still quite so happy to do so after watching their father blamed and backstabbed in the media this week? We've heard precious little from them as the week has worn on, and his co-workers seem to be getting mighty angry at the Swift-bb-ing. Are they in line for any Iraq security or Hurricane Katrina reconstruction contracts? Because enquiring minds want to know. (graphic by Jesus' General) [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 1:07:00 PM    comment []

Able Danger 'IDed 9/11 hijacker'. Able Danger 'IDed 9/11 hijacker' [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 1:03:49 PM    comment []

A "senior Bush adviser" is quoted as saying that if Cheney "just apologizes and tells the press to stop making a mountain out of a molehill ... the thing is done" -- but Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell and TNR's Ryan Lizza raise some 'Troubling Questions About Cheney's Boss.' [Cursor.org] 11:02:04 AM    comment []

An NBC story was scrubbed of the ranch owner's comment that "There may be a beer or two in there, but remember not everyone in the party was shooting," and CNN's Bruce Morton said that while Bush "likes to hunt quail with family and friends" and Cheney "loves to hunt," Kerry "spent time posing with guns." [Cursor.org] 10:51:29 AM    comment []

Sheriff: Cops must have sex to bust pros. Sheriff: Cops must have sex to bust pros [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 9:32:29 AM    comment []

RJ Eskow: Cheney's Chappaquiddick II: The Real Story Emerges. 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. A Night Light [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 9:31:26 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.