CHENEY WAS DRINKING AND WITH ANOTHER WOMAN

Cheney’s Chappaquiddick II: The Real Story Emerges

by RJ Eskow

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.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/cheneys-chappaquiddick-i_b_15711.html