Thursday, February 16, 2006

When history repeats itself

With seemingly everyone else in the known universe talking about Dick Cheney's hunting accident this past Saturday, I guess it's only right that I toss in my two cents on the matter.

When I first heard about it, it was only a passing comment that said something about the vice president going around shooting people, and I dismissed it as a rather twisted attempt at humor. Later, of course, I found out just how wrong I was. Dick Cheney, the VPOTUS himself, shot a guy in the face. (And chest.) Of course, this sort of thing happened once before, but that one was on purpose.

What gets me about this whole situation, though, is that a) the story was so hush-hush to start with, and b) the story doesn't seem to match up to the incident report. In section VI, "Miscellaneous Factors", the game warden marked the box for "flat" topography. In all the stories I've heard of the incident, Whittington was said to be in a low spot, a depression, a gully, or something of that nature. I'm not sure why someone would make that up. After all, if the guy was in a depression and Cheney was firing at a flushed and flying bird, I imagine the physics involved in pellet spray wouldn't send many downward at that sort of angle, so flat terrain only makes sense.

The next question mark comes with section III, information about the shooter and victim. Both are marked as violating "P & W Code 43.652". I haven't heard much about that, but that's probably because it turns out that they were missing a stamp or somesuch for hunting quail, and they wouldn't have even received a fine for that anyway. Moving along...back to the first issue.

Cheney waited 18 hours to report the incident. That's a bit of an odd period of time to wait, and he still hasn't been forthright as to why he waited so long. If it was an innocent accident, he shouldn't have had anything to worry about, and the matter would've been closed fairly quickly aside from the late-night talk show hosts' cracks at his expense. But on Wednesday it came out that he had at least a beer at lunch the day of the shooting. Now, for most people, a beer or two at lunch wouldn't cause any issues at 5:00 in the evening, when the incident was supposed to have occurred. However, with Cheney, who is apparently heavily medicated for his heart condition, one has to wonder how much his pills may have amplified the effects of the alcohol he had drunk earlier in the day.

There is a positive we can take from all of this, though. Whittington, who is now partially made of lead, will probably make a good recovery once the surgical scars heal, and his heart rhythm is back to normal already.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Some interesting stories about it here:

http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/signs/chains/signs20060213_BigDickandtheExtendersStrikeAgain.php