Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Dick Cheney's Cover-Up Continues

Although there is no evidence that beer impaired Cheney's judgment, initial denials that he had consumed alcohol were wrong. “No one was drinking,” Armstrong said at the outset. “No, zero, zippo.” She said the hunters washed down lunch with Dr Pepper. Later, she qualified her comments and said beer might have been in the cooler but she did not think anyone drank any. The investigating officer from the Kenedy County sheriff's department, after interviewing Whittington in the hospital, reported that the victim “explained foremost there was no alcohol during the hunt.” Authorities did not investigate the accident until the next day. The Texas Parks and Wildlife accident report, dated two days after the shooting, checked “No” on the question of whether Cheney appeared under the influence of intoxicants. It did not address whether the hunters had been drinking at all. (The report also included a diagram depicting Whittington's wounds on the wrong side of his body.) Cheney acknowledged Wednesday, “I had a beer at lunch” several hours before the group's afternoon hunt, asserting “nobody was under the influence.” VP Accident Tale Filled With Discrepancies

We welcome all serious attempts to get at the truth on what has become the
swiss cheese alibi of Dick Cheney.

Accidentally shooting someone you're hunting with can happen. But as we offered
earlier this week, in 2004, with over 1 million hunters in Texas, only 49 shootings
were recorded. It simply doesn't happen very often. However, what NEVER happens
in accidental shootings is that the shooter gets to evade authorities for 18
hours or so, with enough time to clean up, doctor up and sober up. There is
not an American in this country, senators and representatives included, judges
and law enforcement, who could pull that one off. But that's exactly what Dick
Cheney did. Dick's mouthpiece, Mary
Queen of Carville, is scheduled to be on “Meet the Press” tomorrow.
It ought to be a beauty in palace spin.

But as for the “rebuttals” of our assessment that Dick Cheney was
indeed closer than 30 yards, nothing has been presented by anyone so far that
shakes our assessment, interviews and personal field test and analysis of the
situation. If information is presented that is credible and substantial, we'll
be glad to review the matter, but that certainly hasn't happened so far.

Let's also get something straight. Dick Cheney's swiss cheese alibi and the
shooting accident that has our vice president running to Wyoming, as well as
kicking the victim out of the hospital and getting him to issue an apology to
the shooter no less, are the events that precipitated our reaction and those
of others. As SusanH
over BoomanTribune states so well (first posted here), “…it's part of the pattern.
Most egregiously, a lack of responsibility. Then there's the carelessness, the
lack of consideration or even consciousness of other human beings' lives, the
self-serving lies and cover-ups, and the callousness.” SusanH isn't
a hunter and doesn't care one whit about guns, but she gets it. So do many other
average Americans.

The wingnuts are restless and for good reason. Check out memeorandum
to see the Cheney loyalists circling the wagons. Unfortunately, it's not going
to work this time, and frankly, it shouldn't. Some things need to be more important
than political party and this is one of them. No American is above the law.

Some of the arguments made by the Republican Loyalists are just silly, frankly,
so we won't offer links, because we understand they're trying to honestly back
up their guy. We won't embarrass them by calling them out. But just check memeorandum
and you'll see what we're talking about.

“I'll tell you what really doesn't add up here. It's the 30 yards distance. When I talked to friends of mine who were avid hunters, a 28 gauge shotgun is not a powerful weapon unless you happen to be a quail or you happen to be very close. And I think that there's just a question whether at that distance those kind of injuries could occur.” - Paul Burka, executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine (interviewed by Keith Olbermann)

Part of the Republican Loyalist “proof” is splitting hairs about
a modified choke and a full choke, which basically just deals with the issue
of a tighter group of pellets being dispersed. Speaking bluntly, a barrel is
an open hole, but once the bbs come out they separate equally. It's really that
simple.

Some Republican Loyalists also talk about the bb count. Again, no matter how
many bbs there are, they still would spread out equally. In addition, any projectile
is going to lose energy the further out it gets, period, until it finally, after
losing enough energy, drops to the ground. That's simple physics. The Alex
Jones video showed that when the bbs got out to 30 yards they lost enough
energy that they couldn't penetrate deeper than 1 millimeter in the chicken
and 3 millimeters, at most, in a watermelon. In fact, in the raw chicken, the
bb dropped out, bounced away. In the watermelon, the bbs couldn't get further
in either.

As a reminder, though many were obviously thinking that Dick Cheney was closer than 30 yards, we openly questioned the 30 yard distance long before anyone else. As I've also said before, I can't take any credit, because I'm just a gun enthusiast and an amateur, but my husband is not and neither are the people with whom he spoke. Other experts above our level have also spoken out. However, because Dick Cheney thought he was above the law and didn't immediately report what happened, we may never know the truth. Dick Cheney and everyone involved at the Armstrong Ranch made sure that was the case, in our opinion.

As to the question of how many foot pounds it takes to penetrate an object,
how many does it take to get a bb into a 78 year old man's heart? Remember,
the bb has to go through an undershirt, a jacket and a protective vest, then
skin, bone, gristle, muscle, lung sac, heart, etc. Remember the chicken at 30
yards? Let's also remember that birds, quail, are fragile. As my husband said
today when we were discussing all this, sometimes when you shoot a bird they're
still alive after they take the hit, but they're messed up beyond life's breath
(my words, not his).

“…I wondered why in the first place they moved him by ambulance to Kingsville, which is a small town which would not have the medical facilities that Corpus Christi had and if you were a suspicious soul you might think that they brought him to Kingsville because they would more likely be able to conduct things out of the light of day than they would be in Corpus Christi. But of course the same might have happened in Corpus Christi if the ranch owner, Ms. Armstrong, had not decided to call. But certainly you're going to get better medical treatment in Corpus Christi, you would think — I don't want to denigrate Kingsville but it's a much smaller town. That raised my eyebrows, because they were starting from the middle of a ranch, so they had to drive through some pretty rough country, probably unimproved roads to get there and it took quite a while.” – Paul Burka (interviewed by Keith Olbermann)

There are many other questions in this that go beyond the accidental shooting
of Mr. Whittington and Vice President Dick Cheney's efforts to cover up the
truth. As many others have offered, this is a symbol of a larger issue within
the Bush administration, a tipping point or better yet, a flash point that has
ignited many regular folk's indignation at the arrogance and disrespect for
the truth, as well as the belief that the Republicans controlling Congress and
the White House are above the law.

There remains nothing in any argument we've seen so far that refutes our own
research and field
test, which began long before the Alex
Jones video appeared. My husband used a 12 gauge, which is why we went deeper
into the issue, but even using the 12 gauge the same spread pattern exists:
“The 28-gauge is well within the necessary energy load to take small
game at that range, and it's not too far under the 20- and 12-gauge shotguns”
(source
– thanks to reader “deepthroat”).

The medical information doesn't add up either, but all I can do is offer Dr.s'
opinions on this, because that's way above our pay grade.

This is really bird shot that penetrated the chest to get immediately adjacent or even into the heart and is damaging the heart by the direct force of the bird shot. The News Hour Although hospital officials mentioned that the pellet had “moved” to Whittington's heart, Dr. Soumitra Eachempati, a trauma surgeon at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Hospital said it was not clear whether the birdshot had somehow penetrated deeper into the chest cavity to reach the heart, or if it had been lodged elsewhere and carried to the heart through a vein. Scripps Howard News Service “He was shot in the heart.” Dr. Bernadine Healy

Dick Cheney's swiss cheese alibi is just that and we stand by
our belief, which has been backed up by the statements of many others, that
Dick Cheney was much closer than 30 yards.

There was only one way to make sure this confusion had never occurred.
If Dick Cheney had come forward at the start, immediately after the shooting,
we wouldn't be having this discussion. The question lingers like the smell of
rotten carcass left out in the field after a negligent, drive-by hunter walked away from
prey he didn't respect: Why didn't Dick Cheney talk to the police immediately?
Because he didn't, our righteous questions rage.

Once upon a time the Republican Party stood for the “rule
of law” and the Constitution. If the party of Lincoln still existed, they
wouldn't be attacking average American citizens like my husband and me, as well
as thousands of readers, of both parties and none at all. Even John McCain has
gone over to the dark side in order to become president. Straight talk is dead, and so, evidently, is the oath to the truth.

However, there are still some citizens who are sick of the elitist
Republican ruling class ignoring the fact that they work for us. We're asking
questions because Dick Cheney chose to evade the authorities and not give an
immediate report on a shooting accident that any other American would have to
give. They think they're above the law. We're pushing back because they're not.

UPDATE: Evidently, RedstatedRacists' biggest problem with our analysis revolves around the fact that I had the audacity to “swipe” the video from Alex Jones. That he posts the paltry whinings of another Republican Loyalist as the only evidence that we are wrong, without offering any of his own evidence, doesn't exactly further the discussion. Again, we are hosting this video for one reason only, for which I will not apologize. It took me over 45 min. to view it the first time I tried because of the overload of visitors. Frankly put, the download sucked, so I knew people wouldn't take the time to view it. That was the important issue in this matter. We also gave credit where it was due, as well as other facts so the viewer could judge for him or herself. They're clearly worried about what we have offered, as well as the statements of others, followed finally by the video. Otherwise, RedstateRacists (link added) wouldn't be coming after me instead of attacking the facts. Again, we welcome any argument and evidence that disproves what we've offered, but we haven't been given any so far.

UPDATE II: The Week That Was at the White House, by David Gregory

UPDATE III: It Was Not a Mistake When Dick Cheney Routed Around the Press, by journalism guru, Jay Rosen

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