Hainy Cheney
I am not (quite yet) one to talk about accidents and being careful. I have been a lot better about things in the last few years, but I have had my fair share of car accidents. A couple of them have been my fault, but at this point I've been clean long enough to nearly have progressive's lowest rate (I still have one speeding ticket on the record until later this year). I CAN talk about responsibility.
I've never been hunting and never will. That is certainly my own decision, and if people want to go "hunting" --
*SIDE NOTE * (Real hunting to me would involve slaying a bear with a knife or bagging a deer with your bare hands. Cats and dogs do some real hunting. Humans go fake hunting. I'll never be impressed that you shot a deer when I regularly see them at distances of 30 yards or less, nor will I be impressed that you killed a defenseless animal with a gun.)
--I have no problem with it as long as you eat what you kill. Hell, I've gone fishing before. It's practically the same thing. But if I had a gun in my hand, I would make damn sure I knew what I was shooting at before I shot. I don't own a gun because I believe in the potential for accidents. So does the whole of Western Europe :-)
There are 4 points I would like to make here. 3 of them hunters have come out and said, and the last just makes sense.
1.) If you shoot someone, it is NOT their fault, it is yours for shooting them. Why Scott Mclellan decided to throw Wittington under the bus by condemning him for not announcing himself I have no idea. I would have had perfect respect for the situation if they had said "Dick Cheney had an accident and accidents happen. He has apologized to Wittington and Wittington will hopefully make a full recovery. Next question." I would have shrugged and moved on.
HOWEVER, this administration has such a huge fear of actually taking responsibility for ANYTHING, that the press secretary tried to pass the buck! Honestly, when there are several ways to handle a situation like this, why do you take the way that makes you look like you're hiding something? My opinion is that the administration has gotten incredibly defensive in the wake of many stories (Katrina, Iraq, Scooter Libby...) and they've reached the point that the local community college reaches when they're playing Duke in basketball (yes, I worked in a college sports reference). They just start swatting at things incoherently without any direction whatsoever.
2.) When you're hunting quail, you don't shoot at the ground. That's just common sense. It's a bird that you flush in groups (I think they fly up in groups) and you hope to get them with a spray. It just seems to me that you do the research before you do the activity, and your preparedness and enjoyment of the activity will increase. I wouldn't just take a hanglider up to the top of a mountain and jump. My perception of this might be wrong, but this is the appearance of the incident to me. He probably didn't know much about quail hunting.
3.) When you go hunting in a group, know where your friends are. In God's name, if you do one thing, do this.
4.) This is my point. When someone gets shot, the police should know about it. If you shoot someone who attacks you in your own house, how much would it look like self defense if you report it 6 days later when flies have eaten the body? Cheney waited almost a day to report the incident, when a reasonable reaction would have been to get Wittington to the hospital and then call the police instantly. Was he trying to cover it up???
So let's keep score on scandals (or appearance of scandals). Over 8 years, Bill Clinton had
1.) Whitewater/Vince Foster
2.) Monica Lewinsky/Paula what's her name
3.) The Sudan bombing.
Please tell me if I am missing anything. Over 6 years, Bush has had
1.) Possible ties to the Abramoff/Delay scandal
2.) Iraq and the WMD/selective information use.
3.) Abu Ghraib.
4.) The torture issue.
5.) Obtained wiretaps without warrants illegally. And they thought Clinton should be impeached.
6.) Scooter Libby and the classified information leak.
7.) The poor handling of Hurricane Katrina.
8.) A closed door "energy meeting" with oil executives, eventually leading to an incident in Congress where Ted Stevens refused to have the executives take an oath.
9.) An apparent mishandling of Cheney's hunting accident, maybe an illicit cover up attempt.
When does it end? At what point do we say that the 39% of people that approve of his job have reached a stratospheric level of stubbornness. And why does presidential approval go up just because nothing bad has happened in a while?
-K
posted by Kevin Hirst at 1:22 PM
4 Comments:
Kevin,
I suppose you missed Cheney talking with Brit Hume earlier today...
In any case, I think you're mixing a couple of issues here.
It's not like nobody owns a gun in Western Europe, by the way. The Swiss have about half the handgun ownership rate of the US, France and Germany about a third. This doesn't include the Swiss policy of issuing rifles to citizens that can be called to serve in the Army. (And does not include the actual military, as well.)
Also, doesn't birdshot spray? It seems likely (physics-wise) that even if Cheney aimed in the air, the conical trajectory of the birdshot would mean some pellets might go toward the ground.
Next, I really don't think there is any way the press would have let Scott McClellan just say that Cheney had an accident, hope there is a full recovery, and move on. Some fool (other than David Gregory) in the press gallery was actually asking if there could be criminal charges. I suppose we'll see for sure if the press drops it by Friday.
I think, more than likely (and this goes along with your list of scandals), that being that the press has tried to pin anything and everything on the administration, he knew it would be blown way out of proportion, and simply decided not to feed the press.
The fact that you equated "Cheney coverup" as a scandal on par with Whitewater I think, bespeaks my point.
As for scandal, Clinton (in my opinion) genuinely believed in the Sudan strike. Perhaps he had bad intelligence. Nevertheless, I supported him and I don't think it's a scandal.
Monica -- Clinton should not have been impeached, I say. But do you think the Republicans would have let him go if he simply came out and said, "I did it, I take responsibility, let's move on?" I doubt it. Same scenario with Cheney.
If you're looking for a scandalous coverup, you should try looking at Henry Cisneros.
Okay - I admit to exagerrating the "illicit cover up attempt" of the Cheney shooting. I exagerrate to prove a point too. But it seems that Cheney is secretive to the point of scariness sometimes. But regardless, if someone is shot, it needs to be reported to police, and any cover up of that fact could be deemed "illicit"
Kevin,
But you see my point, I think -- it's that everything is desperately exaggerated to try to pin something on Bush, Cheney, anybody in this administration. Who wouldn't be wary of the press after years of this treatment?
For example, "if someone is shot, it needs to be reported to police" -- there's a very large gulf between playing around with a loaded handgun, having it discharge accidentally, and hitting someone in the head, and intentionally going quail hunting and being sprayed with birdshot pellets smaller than BBs. (I am aware Whittington suffered a mild heart attack.)
In my hometown I've know several people who've been hit accidentally by BBs, and none were reported to the police. It's not as if Cheney never reported it to police, and he did inform the ranch owner and had her inform the local newspaper.
Let's keep this in perspective. If you're going quail hunting, you're not going to try to hit it with an M-16. The intention is to kill the quail without doing significant damage to the meat. If you're riding that line between killing and minimizing damage with respect to something as small as a quail, I doubt it will do serious damage to a human.
About the defensiveness of the Bush Administration -- if you hit someone with a BB, and the press blew up like this, wouldn't you start avoiding them too?
Ashelyn,
I'll not disagree that Cheney might be a big damn fool. And I'd certainly probably mull it over awhile before going hunting with Dick Cheney, and I'm 51 years younger than Whittington.
However, I'm sure you'll agree that sometimes accidents happen. You probably know the potential better than anyone (certainly better than me), and that's why you take those kinds of precautions. I'm just saying it doesn't rise to national scandal.
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