Attention Wascals: Beware the Bald Guy with the Bird Gun! Cartoon Roundup

Harry Whittington, the man US Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot while hunting, suffered a minor heart attack after pieces of birdshot lodged in his heart, doctors said.

Doctors said there were no immediate fears for the life of the 78-year-old lawyer, who was accidentally shot by Cheney on Saturday during a hunting party.

A spokesman for the Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial in Corpus Christi, Texas, said the hospital was in contact with White House doctors.

The birdshot "basically has lodged in a certain area causing inflammatory changes. When that occurs it causes irritability," David Blanchard, emergency room chief at the hospital, told a new conference.

"At this point in time, there’s no plans to do surgery to remove that bird shot," hospital spokesman Peter Banko told the news conference.

"It’s fixed in the heart at this point in time. However it will require that we monitor Mr. Whittington for up to another seven days in the hospital to make sure no more bird shot moves into vital organs, as well as that piece of bird shot doesn’t move anywhere else in the heart," the spokesman added.

Cheney shot the prominent Texas lawyer in the neck, face and chest with birdshot as the two were out quail hunting on a Texas ranch.

Mary Vallis, National Post
Monday, February 13, 2006

Dick Cheney, the Vice-President of the United States, accidentally shot and wounded a 78-year-old hunting buddy while hunting at a Texas ranch this weekend.

Mr. Cheney, 65, was out with friends at a private ranch in Kenedy County late on Saturday afternoon when he accidentally sprayed an elderly companion with shotgun pellets at about 5:30 p.m.

"It appears he was peppered with a shotgun while hunting for quail," Peter Banko, an administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial, said in an interview.

Mr. Banko said the victim, lawyer Harry Whittington of Austin, Tex., suffered wounds to his face, neck and chest. He was in stable condition in the trauma intensive care unit late yesterday.

Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the ranch, was a member of the hunting party and witnessed the accident.

She said Mr. Cheney, an experienced hunter, did not realize Mr. Whittington had rejoined the group without announcing himself, which is proper protocol among hunters.

"They had no idea he was there," Ms. Armstrong said.

"A bird flew up, the Vice-President followed it through around to his right and shot, and unfortunately, unbeknownst to anybody, Harry was there and he got peppered pretty good with a spray of 28-gauge pellets," Ms. Armstrong said.

"He was turning, facing the Vice-President, but turning to the right, and it sprayed him across the right side of his face, his shoulder, his chest and along the rib cage area," she said.

Ms. Armstrong said Mr. Cheney’s medical team attended to Mr. Whittington before he was taken to the hospital.

She described Mr. Cheney as "an excellent, conscientious shot."

"The person who is not doing the shooting at the point is just as responsible, and should be, as the person actually shooting," Ms. Armstrong said.

Mr. Whittington, a wealthy Republican and donor to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush, was taken to hospital at 8:15 p.m. on Saturday.

Local media reported that officials with the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Office were investigating the incident.

Mr. Cheney visited Mr. Whittington at the hospital for about 20 minutes yesterday afternoon, Mr. Banko said. The victim’s wife and family members spent the day at the hospital.

"Nobody wants this to happen, but it does," Lea Anne McBride, the Vice-President’s spokeswoman, told the local newspaper.

Mr. Cheney is an avid hunter and frequent visitor to the Armstrong Ranch, a sprawling, 20,000-hectare spread in south Texas. In October, he spoke at the funeral of Tobin Armstrong, the family’s patriarch.

Mr. Cheney’s past escapades have raised the ire of both animal activists and political watchdog groups. In December, 2003, he visited a game farm in Pennsylvania. When gamekeepers released 500 pen-reared pheasants, he shot 70 and ordered them plucked and vacuum-packed. The Humane Society of the United States exposed Mr. Cheney’s "canned hunt."

Another trip a few week later raised allegations of conflict of interest. In early 2004, it was revealed Mr. Cheney had gone on a duck hunt in southern Louisiana with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an old friend. The trip took place in January, 2004, three weeks after the high court agreed to hear a controversial case involving the Vice-President.

"Vice-President Cheney continues to demonstrate terrible misjudgment with his hunting behaviour," Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, said in an interview last night.

Mr. Pacelle said Mr. Cheney’s hunts represent the worst aspects of the sport — the "good-ol’-boy network," the use of an "unethical" hunting facility, as well as harming a companion.

"Now he’s shot a hunting partner. We really don’t understand what his obsession with shooting animals is. Certainly he has plenty of other things to keep him busy."

"Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt ... making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird." -Jon Stewart

"Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It’s Dick Cheney." -David Letterman

"Cheney’s defense is that he was aiming at a quail when he shot the guy. Which means that Cheney now has the worst aim of anyone in the White House since Bill Clinton." -Jay Leno

"You can understand why this lawyer fellow let his guard down, because if you’re out hunting with a politician, you think, ’If I’m going to get it, it’s going to be in the back.’" -Craig Ferguson

"But all kidding aside, and in fairness to Dick Cheney, every five years he has to shed innocent blood or he violates his deal with the devil." -Jimmy Kimmel

"The Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now, according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be a 78- year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face." -"Daily Show" correspondent Rob Corddry

Vice President Dick Cheney revealed today that he shot a fellow hunter while on a quail hunting trip over the weekend because he believed the man was the fugitive terror mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the man he sprayed with pellets on Saturday was not al-Zawahiri but rather Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, blaming the mix-up on “faulty intelligence.”

“I believed I had credible intelligence that al-Zawahiri had infiltrated my hunting party in disguise with the intent of spraying me with pellets,” Mr. Cheney told reporters. “Only after I shot Harry in the face and he shouted ‘Cheney, you bastard’ did I realize that this intelligence was faulty.”

Moments after Mr. Cheney’s assault on Mr. Whittington, Mr. al-Zawahiri appeared in a new videotape broadcast on al-Jazeera to announce that he was uninjured in the vice president’s attack because, in his words, “I was in Pakistan.”

An aide to the vice president said he believed that the American people would believe Mr. Cheney’s version of events, but added, “If he was going to shoot any of his cronies right now it’s a shame it wasn’t Jack Abramoff.”

At the White House, President George W. Bush defended his vice president’s shooting of a fellow hunter, saying that the attack sent “a strong message to terrorists everywhere.”

“The message is, if Dick Cheney is willing to shoot an innocent American citizen at point-blank range, imagine what he’ll do to you,” Mr. Bush said.

Elsewhere, aviator Steve Fossett completed his three-day journey around the globe, setting a world record for wasting both time and money.

By Joe Strupp
February 14, 2006

NEW YORK Former White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater criticized Vice President Dick Cheney Tuesday for delaying the release of information about his hunting accident on Saturday, saying Cheney "ignored his responsibility to the American people." He told E&P he was "appalled by the whole handling of this."

"The responsibility for handling this, of course, was Cheney’s," Fitzwater, who served as presidential press secretary for George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, told E&P in a phone interview from his Maryland home. "What he should have done was call his press secretary and tell her what happened and she then would have gotten a hold of the doctor and asked him what happened. Then interview [ranch owner] Katharine Armstrong to get her side of events and then put out a statement to inform the public.

"They could have done all of that in about two hours on Saturday. It is beyond me why it was not done this way."

The shooting victim, Harry Whittington, suffered a heart attack today when birdshot migrated to his heart but is still listed in stable condition.

Fitzwater pointed out that the White House had very set policies about handling unexpected events when he was there. "We had a very specific plan if the president or vice president were involved in any kind of incident like this," he told E&P. "It was a very precise plan of who would call who and how the information would get out."

Fitzwater, who served as White House press secretary from 1987 to 1992, was referring of course to Cheney’s accidental shooting on Saturday of attorney Harry Whittington during a hunting trip at a Texas ranch. Although Whittington has survived he is still hospitalized. Cheney and the White House have been slammed for not revealing the incident to the press until late Sunday, hours after news outlets reported it.

Fitzwater, who also served as deputy presidential press secretary from 1982 to 1985 — and press secretary to Vice President Bush from 1985 to 1986 — stressed that the biggest error involved was not getting the information out right away.

"If [Cheney’s] press secretary had any sense about it at all, she would have gotten the story together and put it out. Calling AP, UPI, and all of the press services. That would have gotten the story out and it would have been the right thing to do, recognizing his responsibility to the people as a nationally elected official, to tell the country what happened," Fitzwater added.

"Secondly, it would have been confined to the vice president. By not telling anyone for 24 hours, it made it a White House story. Now it has become ’when was the president notified?’, ’why didn’t he put it out?’ It becomes a story about the White House handling of it."

Calls to the vice president’s press secretary, Lea Anne McBride, were not immediately returned.

When asked about Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s response to the story, which has included heated exchanges with reporters and limited information, Fitzwater offered some sympathy for the man in his old job, declaring he should not be put in that position. "He is in a terrible spot," Fitzwater said. "He can’t be critical of his vice president, but he doesn’t have much of an option."

Joe Lockhart, who was President Bill Clinton’s press secretary, told the Los Angeles Times Monday, "On the face of it, this looks like something the administration felt the public had no right to know. I don’t think there’s going to be a bunch of people sitting around saying: ’I wonder why they waited to tell us.’ But what they will be saying is: ’I wonder what else they’re not telling us.’ "

Discussing the plans in place when he was in McClellan’s job, Fitzwater cited an incident in the early 1990s when George H.W. Bush was at Camp David for the weekend and collapsed, sparking a need to transport him to the hospital. "The statement was on the wires going out to the country before the helicopter had left to take him to the hospital," Fitzwater recalled. "I can’t believe they didn’t have a similar plan here. It is all Cheney, he is the key that has to start all this. I am appalled by the whole handling of this."

Why isn’t Dick Cheney on TV right now?

The vice president of the United States shoots someone in a hunting accident and rather than immediately come clean to the public, his office keeps it a secret for almost a whole day. Even then, it’s only to confirm a report in a local paper.

And still from the White House, no details, no apologies, and no Cheney.

No one is suggesting that Cheney shot his hunting buddy on purpose. But could he have been negligent? What does he say happened exactly? What do the others there — not just their hostess — say took place? Shouldn’t there be some sort of investigation? Does Cheney take any responsibility? And just when was he planning on letting the press know?

Shailagh Murray and Peter Baker write in The Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney accidentally sprayed a companion with birdshot while hunting quail on a private Texas ranch, injuring the man in the face, neck and chest, the vice president’s office confirmed yesterday after a Texas newspaper reported the incident.

"The shooting occurred late Saturday afternoon while Cheney was hunting with Harry Whittington, 78, a prominent Austin lawyer, on the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas. Hearing a covey of birds, Cheney shot at one, not realizing that Whittington had startled the quail and that he was in the line of fire."

Officially, Cheney isn’t saying sorry: " ’The vice president visited Harry Whittington at the hospital and was pleased to see that he’s doing fine and in good spirits,’ Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said yesterday. Cheney returned to Washington last night."

Unofficially, maybe a little: " ’The vice president was concerned,’ said Mary Matalin, a Cheney adviser who spoke with him yesterday morning. ’He felt badly, obviously. On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violate any of the [rules]. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.’ "

Anne E. Kornblut writes in the New York Times: "White House officials did not release details of the accident. But Katharine Armstrong, who was with the hunting party at the time of the shooting, said that Mr. Cheney, 65, fired his shotgun without realizing that Mr. Whittington had approached the group, hitting him on his right side, on his cheek, neck and chest. . . .

" ’This all happened pretty quickly,’ Ms. Armstrong said in a telephone interview from her ranch. Mr. Whittington, she said, ’did not announce — which would be protocol — ’Hey, it’s me, I’m coming up,’ ’ she said. . . .

"Asked why the vice president’s office had made no announcement about the accident, [Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride] said, ’We deferred to the Armstrongs regarding what had taken place at their ranch.’ "

And how’s this for a quick investigation? " ’It was accidental, a hunting accident,’ Sheriff Ramon Salinas III of Kenedy County said from his office in Sarita, Tex., adding that the Secret Service notified him Saturday of the episode. ’They did what they had to according to law.’ "

At 50,000 acres, the Armstrong ranch is one of the largest private properties in Texas, and its owners are long-time Republican benefactors.

Precedents

Susan Page writes in USA Today that "there are few shootings on record by presidents or vice presidents. Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. In some ways, Cheney’s accident is more reminiscent of occasions when President Ford drove golf balls into a crowd, beaning bystanders."

Murray and Baker write: "Two years ago, he was criticized for going duck hunting with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia soon after the court had agreed to hear Cheney’s appeal in an lawsuit related to his energy task force. A month earlier, he had bagged about 70 stocked pheasants at a private shooting club in Pennsylvania."

Blog Watch

Joel Achenbach writes in his washingtonpost.com blog: "I find the story reassuring. Cheney is a man who doesn’t just talk the talk. No, if he’s going to send American soldiers into harm’s way, where they might be shot at any moment by a deranged fanatic, he’s also going to do the same thing to his close personal friends. He’s giving his hunting buddies a taste of life in the Cheney Era, when you count yourself lucky just to get out alive."

Blogger Josh Marshall is asking lots of pointed questions.

Oliver Willis asks: "Do you think that if Al Gore had shot someone that the media wouldn’t hear/report it for 24 hours?"

Michelle Malkin writes: "Unfortunately, this is very bad news for the White House—and not just because of the inevitable late-night jokes that will inundate the airwaves over the next week. The Dems will exploit this accident to smear Cheney as incapable of being trusted, weak of mind, etc. The resignation rumors will fly again. And the biography of a man who has served this country so well and so honorably for so many years will be overshadowed by a single, ill-fated hunting mishap."

Cheney and Wiretapping

Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball and Evan Thomas write in Newsweek: "It is not yet clear how the public feels about warrantless wiretapping. . . . But there is no question that the solons of Capitol Hill—and, increasingly, those in the Republican Party—are growing restless and ready to challenge the authority of the Bush White House.

"In part, congressional egos and prerogatives are on the line. Members of both parties feel bullied by the sometimes high-handed treatment they get from the Bush administration, particularly from Vice President Dick Cheney, the outspoken avatar of executive power. . . .

"Cheney’s attitude seems to be: bring it on."

Cheney and Plame

Anne Marie Squeo and John D. McKinnon write in the Wall Street Journal: "The disclosure that Vice President Dick Cheney may have authorized his former chief of staff to release classified information to justify the war in Iraq has political consequences for the White House, but the legal fallout may be muted."

The Associated Press reports: "Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should investigate Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the CIA leak probe if they authorized an aide to give secret information to reporters, Democratic and Republican senators said Sunday."

Neil A. Lewis writes in the New York Times: "Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney would need to resign if he had ordered a leak that resulted in the public exposure of an undercover C.I.A. officer."

And then Dick Cheney shot someone. It was Saturday, February 11. He didn’t do it on purpose. He thought he was shooting at quail. But there wasn’t any quail, there was just a 78-year-old lawyer in a bright orange vest. Dick Cheney shot him in the face.
They were on a 50,000-acre ranch, one of the largest private properties in Texas. Katharine Armstrong, who owns the ranch, said Harry Whittington, who was shot in the face, did not announce, did not say, "Hey, it’s me, I’m coming up." Which is protocol. So as the lawyer stepped out of the brush the birds flew and Dick Cheney turned and fired. There was no time for diplomacy, no time to wait, take a good look at the vest, colored by blood lust and spackled in sunlight. Because if you wait too long you don’t get the bird. There are consequences for not firing your weapons; those tasty little beasts might fly away.

If Cheney is right, and he shoots the bird, there are feathers and pieces of beak and the stringy innards caught in the branches, but that’s not what happened. He did not achieve his objective.

Here’s the weird thing. Katharine Armstrong is presenting the evidence that Harry Whittington didn’t follow protocol. But how the hell would she know? Who told Katharine that Harry didn’t announce? Who is complicit in this narrative? Why would we take her at her word without knowing where she received her information? Harry leaves the group. He is between the other hunters and the vice president. Maybe Cheney hears him, maybe he doesn’t. Only Harry knows whether he announced or did not. It seems unlikely that he didn’t.

There was an ambulance there and medical technicians. They were with the vice president. They always are. Harry was airlifted to the Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital where he is listed in stable condition but housed in intensive care.

It’s scary and obvious how similar this is to America’s invasion of Iraq. We had to go into Iraq immediately because they could mobilize their nuclear weapons within hours and their secret programs were moments away from completing an arsenal of radioactive invasion deterrent. When it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction it wasn’t our fault. After all, everybody thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After all, Harry didn’t follow protocol. We had to go in right away. There was no time to let the weapons inspectors finish their work. Guide those missiles into Baghdad, burn down the sky, turn quickly and fire or you will miss the bird. And when tens of thousands of people die because of a mistake don’t ever take responsibility for it. After all, he didn’t follow protocol. How were we to know Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction? Saddam was not cooperating. Harry brought it on himself.

Let’s say you are responsible for more than 2,000 American casualties; should you be allowed to walk armed through the woods? At what point do you lose your hunting license? The worst thing is that a person who has responsibility for a blunder that has already caused so much death is allowed to carry a shotgun. A shotgun! I don’t believe that Harry didn’t follow protocol. I see no reason why I should. I won’t accuse Harry of not following protocol. But I will accuse him of not reading the news. Did he have any idea the danger he was in? He was wearing a bright orange vest. He was in the woods with Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney had a gun.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced today that his department would immediately implement a “Cheney Alert” system to warn Americans if an attack by Vice President Dick Cheney is imminent.

The Department of Homeland Security has been under pressure to respond to the widespread panic and anxiety that have gripped the nation since Mr. Cheney shot and wounded a fellow quail hunter while on a hunting trip in Texas over the weekend.

Across the country, people have holed up in their homes and hoarded food and water, fearing another senseless attack by the gun-toting vice president.

“What we have learned, the hard way, is that Dick Cheney can attack without warning,” Mr. Chertoff said. “It is our hope that with this Cheney Alert system we will be able to give the American people some warning before he strikes again.”

The alert system, with five color-coded levels indicating the likelihood of another brutal pellet attack by the Vice President, was derided by some in Congress such as Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del), who likened it to “closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.”

“The fact is, the White House already had ample warning that Dick Cheney was going to strike, and they sat on their hands and did nothing,” Mr. Biden said, referring to a Presidential Daily Brief dated February 4 with the title, “Dick Cheney Determined to Strike in US.”

Elsewhere, former Education Secretary William Bennett said that he was “outraged” that an NHL gambling ring has been in operation for five years and he was never invited to participate in it.