Cheney Takes the Blame, ‘Unapologetic’ and Admits to a Beer in Fox Interview
by Pamela LeaveyWell this is all so special… Dick Cheney’s interview this evening with Brit Hume revealed very little new information on the shooting incident on Saturday.
E&P reported earlier today that Brit Hume in an interview Fox’s Shepard Smith, disclosed some of the unaired footage and Hume said Cheney was “utterly unapologetic” about the reporting lag but “a shaken man” in his interview.
In comments on the cable channel just minutes after ending a 25-minute interview with Cheney, Hume described the encounter as revealing, but with little contrition on Cheney’s part.
“He didn’t blame anyone else, he blamed himself [for the shooting],” Hume told Fox’s Shepard Smith during a brief conversation. “But he didn’t take blame for the way it was handled…the White House press corps be damned.”Hume indicated that Cheney called last Saturday’s accidental shooting “one of the worst days of my life,” but that the vice president was certain that he handled it correctly by waiting nearly a day to make it public. He also revealed that Cheney disclosed having a beer with lunch that day, but stressed that it was several hours before the shooting occurred.
The beer admission by Cheney contradicts the early report from Katherine Armstrong that “no one hunting that day had any beer.”
The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that it had been told that the hunters that day “broke for a lunch of antelope, jicama salad and camp bread, washed down with Dr. Pepper.” Armstrong later modified her remarks, saying there may have been beer in coolers but she didn’t think anyone who was hunting that day had any.
CNN today reports that Armstrong had told CNN she never saw Cheney or Whittington “drink at all on the day of the shooting until after the accident occurred, when the vice president fixed himself a cocktail back at the house.”
NBC News disclosed today, that they called the vice president’s office for comment “four times Tuesday and Wednesday,” and “asked whether the vice president or anyone in the hunting party had consumed any alcohol on Saturday prior to the accident.”
In an e-mail statement Wednesday to NBC News, the vice president’s press secretary referred NBC News to the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Department report on the incident, which said it did not believe alcohol use was a factor in the shooting.
At a news conference Wednesday outside Whittington’s hospital in Corpus Christi, reporters asked hospital officials whether Whittington’s blood-alcohol level had been tested. The officials responded with a “no comment.”
One would think that since Dick and Katerine had some many hours to plot together before making the incident public they would be able to coordinate their stories a little better. As Cheney admits in the interview with Hume “The accuracy [of the story] was enormously important. I had no press person with me.”
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz, speculates on the 14 hour delay in reporting the incident here and notes that “it takes approximately that period of time for alcohol to dissipate in the body and no longer be subject to accurate testing.” Hmmm…
The full trascript of the interview is available here along with a link to the video.
A writer for the Raleigh News & Observer notes today that Cheney’s “fascination with hunting is puzzling because when he had a chance to take up arms for his country during the Vietnam War, he sought every deferment under the sun… Of course, ducks and quail don’t detonate roadside bombs.”
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OK–so how many cops hear the “I only had a couple of beers” routine when pulling over a drunk driver? And after the claim, they come to find that this fool should be dead when they blow into the machine. Shame on you “DICK”, you should know better.
What about him saying he did not ride along in the ambulance? He said something about not wanting to be in the way…too many bodies… He could have shown some sense of concern by riding along or at least behind the ambulance with his detail. Then from the hospital he could have made some public remarks if needed.
Oops, I forgot, if he had come along he might have gotten cornered by the cops at the hospital for a breath test or maybe an indepth interview.
So he just went back to the ranch, had a night cap and actually WENT TO SLEEP. Knowing he had just shot someone? Strange behavior… I guess it’s not too strange when you are use to calling all the shots and looking out for #1.
DAS, that one beer theory might have been in jeopardy then. GOOD GRIEF!!
I love how they are trying to act like Cheney actually is capable experiencing human emotions and regret and for hurting someone yet. LOL. Yeah right… That could happen. You have to be human first I think.
“she didn’t think anyone who was hunting that day had any.”
Actually she’s telling the truth, isn’t she? None of the people in attendance were hunting, were they?
Donnie, correct me if I’m wrong here but aren’t Dick’s “hunts” normally referred to as target practice? I mean, if you’re shooting skeet that’s target practice, right? So when you go to private ranches/farms etc where they raise birds, that they then release in front of you so you can shoot them, can that actually be considered hunting? Sheesh, they weren’t even walking to the next “covey”, they were so f’ing lazy they have to driven to the next spot marked for released birds for them to “hunt”.
Maybe to good old boys and real men like Bush and Cheney that’s hunting but us east coast elitists call that target practice or “kill’n shit”.
Gee, I remember shooting a bird sitting in a tree with my BB gun in my back yard when I was little. I remeber thinking, uh oh…I actually killed that little bird.
I sure didn’t think I was “hunting”. And that was a wild bird too, not raised and released for me. IAlso, about 20 years ago there was a rabbit decimating my garden one time. I bought a have-a-heart trap but the rabbit never went in it. So I got ticked off then(you know me…) and ended up shooting it from my kitchen window with a little pellet pistol. Actually surprised me when I killed it, since it was a good distance away and I must have hit it in the head. I had to scramble to get rid of it before my then 2 year old son saw it. He kept asking why he never saw the little bunny in the garden anymore. 
I felt bad…and I sure wasn’t going to tell him that Daddy got mad at the bunny for not going on the trap so he killed it. Though now I feel better that I know it occurred while I was out hunting game from the kitchen window. I’m sure I’d been drinking at the time too. Since I hadn’t stopped drinking until about year later, that’s almost a given…
I’ve fished a lot before but never realized I’d been hunting, at least twice. Cool, I’m a hunter too
Hey does shooting at targets with a 22 count? How about shooting at random stuff with a 357? I may have hunted even more than I thought…
Hey anybody know where I can get some targets, cans, rocks, a telephone pole and some other inanimate objects mounted? I think they’d look sweet hanging over my fire place!
DAS
I think he probably called his Medical Team and his lawyer. I mean come on it’s common sense for the high profile — Vice President type to immediately think, even after a beer or two — oh sh*t I shot someone… Call a Doctor, Call my lawyer. Oh sh*t!
Dave From Princeton
ROFLMAO… can’t stop…
oh my
You east coast elitist you! Ha ha ha! bet you voted for that damn alpha male didn’t ya!
Is this amazing?
Cheney, who is really running the country, sneaks out of Washington for a “hunting vacation (only a rightwinger could combine “hunting” and “vacation,”) with his babe, Pamela Willeford, the the US Ambassador to Switzerland, lots of cold beer and rifles and then proceed to blast his 78 year old buddy in the chest, face and heart with bird shot, and then not tell anyone for days before selecting FOXNews (GOP-TV) as his venue for a phony mea culpa.
I’m living through a long, hidious nightmare that just won’t end and I can’t awaken from.
Dartanyon
So this is your nightmare and you have all us trapped in it… argh! Please we just recently met here in the blogosphere and now we find out we’ll all in the same nightmare together!
The truth is truly stranger than fiction. We need to find a good screenwriter for the Cheney saga.
Dave from Princeton,
You are correct about the caged releases. I hate that so much!! I have never even gone as far as to hunt with a dog. It’s me and my gun, and my thermos of coffee. I don’t like anything else around me, unless it is friends on the hunt. I always set the pace for safety. ALWAYS!! Anyone that has ever been with me, when guns are involved, know that I will not have an unsafe person around me.
BTW I have never in my life, had anything stuffed. As I have said before, I clean and eat what I kill. I do wonder how Cheney plans to explain that old man on his wall though
Donnie!
You and Dave are so bad tonight!
I heard they had shot something like 300 birds? what the hell do 3 hunters need with 300 + birds. Such a waste. OF course Chenney would go to Faux for his mea culpa. I think he would have been fine with any of the tv networks since they all have kissed his and roves’ feet for the last 5 years.
He thinks he feels bad how woud he like to have a piece of buckshot next to heart for the rest of his life and one day have it move and end it all real quick.
As for pelosi and reid talking about what Chenney needs to do to the press and not to his face after this morning’s breakfast meeting with bush
I’ve got a quote for them.
“Never interrupt you enemy when he is making a mistake” (Napoleon Bonaparte)
HAHA I do have to go and get some rest. I start my week at work in the morning. HEY Dave, I bet I could get a better row of beer cans on my wall than you can, ROFLMAO!!
#1 – Dick has some health problems. Even if he had one, two, a few, or some beers… is there a possibility the alcohol might not react well with medication he is probably taking? Might the effects of the alcohol have been amplified by the drugs?
#2 – Dick just shot someone by accident. Why would he go and fix “himself a cocktail” “after the accident occurred”? Seems like having booze on ones breath is the last thing a person would want after shooting someone and the possibility of the police getting involved.
#3 – As you may or may not know the Armstrong-alcohol angle of the story was reported on the MSNBC web site a few days ago, then it was scrubbed for a few days, and today an adjusted version is back (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11349649/).
The end of that article has a paragraph stating:
————
“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.”
————
If Armstrong was really the eyewitness that Cheney claimed in his interview today:
————
“And so we were confident that Katharine was the right one, especially because she was an eyewitness and she could speak authoritatively on it. She probably knew better than I did what had happened since I’d only seen one piece of it.”
————
Why would she make the security detail and heart problem claim? She is an eyewitness to Dick turning and firing into Harry, Harry going down as a result, and Dick immediately running over to Harry:
————
“I ran over to him,” Cheney said. “He was laying there on his back, obviously bleeding. You could see where the shot struck him.”
————
Yet she thinks there’s a problem with Dick’s heart?
Isbister
It’s lies covering more lies, spin spun out of control.
Maybe what Armstrong meant was she was worried that Cheney would have another heart attack from the stress of what he did? But if that were the case she should have clarified that.
I started to write this about 4 hours ago, then one of my patients had to start bleeding enough for transfusions, etc.
What got to me about the story was that he kept messing up the number of people that were out there. First he said two got out of the car. Then there was Pam, Dick, and Harry. Harry left to go get his bird and when he came back there was a guide and someone else between Pam and Dick. Maybe he doesn’t count beers any better than he counts people. Maybe it was “lite” beer and he thinks it means alcohol not calories.
Although the sherrif would have liked to catch Dick at the hospital, the staff was probably just as happy not to have to deal with him and the entourage.
The idea that the first reports would be eroneous and he was trying to avoid that was horse hockey. He was responsible for talking to the authorities that evening. The other eyewitnesses should also have talked to the Sherrif. AND THEY would have given the official report of the shooting. Dick could have issued a very simple acknowledgement that the accident had happened, how badly he felt and how much he was praying.
The hospital reports the patient’s condition and they are very fussy about what information is released in those circumstances. Especially when they are dealing with a 78 year old, a lot of bird shot pellets, one of them near his heart; who has been shot by the VP. If DC has been dealing with the press all these years, why doesn’t he know this?
There are meds that Dick is very likely on that are not good to combine with alcohol. One reason is they lower your blood pressure.
Alcohol can do that because of the relaxation effect. Alcohol also causes dehydration (especially in dry Texas while you are out with a shotgun looking for birds). Depending on whether you follow the beer with a decaffeinated beverage, you could rehydrate. Iced tea or cola just adds to the dehydration. One of the drugs he is very likely on is a diuretic. Sounds like if he had any side effects, they were subtle enough the hunting partners did not notice.
I totally understand how devastating this kind of experience is for people. Even Darth Cheney. But all the rest of us have to talk to the authorities immediately after. The Secret Service may have had the authority to postpone the debrief, but it was a stupid thing to do. So was the other drink. Alcohol really doesn’t help when you are upset like that. He has medical people with him at all times. From what we know of Dick’s unbending personality, if they did suggest something else, they probably got told to go do something anatomically impossible.
And all the folks who wanted to keep going over the damn blue dress are now convinced that we are just making too big a deal over this and there are more important things to be talking about.
If he can’t tell the world about a mistake that could have had a fatal outcome, and finally gives a story noticeable for numbers that don’t add up; can we trust him to be VP and have so much power over things like war?
The movie theme song only needs a little alteration:
“I shot the lawyer, but I did not shoot the
deputy”
“I had a drink, but I did not talk to the authorities”
“I know the laws, but I do not think they apply to me.”
“I know the press, but I did not even talk to the president”
“I shot the birds and beasts, but I did not serve my country.”
“I have the power, and you will never take it from me.”
FYI Dick, this fat lady is doing a LOT of SINGING.
I was talking with one of the ranch
hands about this Cheney thing.
He says the story is that what happened
was that Cheney and Whittington were
shooting beer cans off each other’s
heads after a having a few.
The dumbass Cheney though didn’t realize
he was supposed to be loaded up with a slug.
-Guy S.