Cheney Lies Again: Shooting Discrepancies
by James Buchanan
Anyone, who watches the highly irreverent Daily Show, has seen footage of Dick Cheney saying completely contradictory things, not just on one occasion, but over and over. One website compiled a list of lies resulting from the vice-presidential debates. For example “Cheney Claimed He Had Never Linked Iraq and 9/11.” There is however videotape of Cheney clearly stating that there were Iraq al Qaeda ties. This was part of the deception campaign to fool Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack into thinking that the war on Iraq was justified. Cheney also put out a series of lies claiming that we had rock solid intelligence that Iraq had WMDs. Cheney helped lie us into war.
As the facts of the recent shooting have slowly leaked out, it’s becoming apparent that Cheney’s carefully choreographed appearance with Fox News’ Brit Hume was another load of propaganda. Cheney didn’t bother to keep track of the members of his hunting party. He swung around and fired at a noise, possibly with the sun in his eyes. He hit his friend, Harry Whittington from a distance of only about fifteen feet NOT thirty yards. Whittington was much more seriously injured (almost killed) by the blast which almost certainly left a pellet in his heart (as opposed to the neocon spin that the pellet migrated to his heart). Whittington’s heart attack (caused by the pellet embedded in his heart) exposed the early neocon lies that it was only a “minor” hunting accident.
One recent news article reports “Vice President Dick Cheney said he didn’t immediately disclose his hunting accident because he wanted the confusing details to come out right. Instead, authorized accounts came out slowly — and often still wrong. The result: a week of shifting blame, belatedly acknowledged beer consumption (not “zero” drinking after all) and evolving discrepancies in how the shooting happened, its aftermath and the way it was told to the nation…”
Since the shooting, one hunting enthusiast, Alex Jones did some experiments and found that there was no possible way Whittington was shot at 30 yards. He did experiments to determine the shotgun spread of a 28 gauge AND the penetration. At 30 yards, the shot would not penetrate two layers of clothes. In order to deeply penetrate into Whittington’s chest, the range had to be about 15 to 18 feet. Mr. Jones even made a short video of his results which can be seen here.
The Wall Street Journal is the first mainstream news source to report on the “distance discrepancy.” They noted in a recent article “the ‘incident report’ from the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Department in Texas shed little light on the subject of how close the vice president was to his hunting partner, Harry Whittington when he was wounded. The report quotes Mr. Cheney as saying that Mr. Whittington was about 30 yards away from him when he turned in the direction of a flying quail and shot. (See sheriff’s report.) That description, though, has become a subject of debate among hunters and experts, who question whether a shot fired at that distance could have penetrated Mr. Whittington’s chest wall, as seems to have happened in the accident. ‘I found that difficult to believe,’ says Gary Goodpaster, an official at Ducks Unlimited, a Memphis, Tenn., conservation group. “For that to have happened, the shot had to be much, much closer than 30 yards.’ ”
Most major political scandals result from the cover up, not the original incident. In Cheney’s case, he recklessly shot his friend in the face. He didn’t bother to check the positions of his hunting buddies and he mistook a grown man for a little bird. After the shooting, Cheney’s underlings tried to blame the victim and put out disinformation. Later, Cheney claimed he only had one beer and he shot his friend from 30 yards distance. Cheney is lying about this incident, and neocon hacks on Fox News and elsewhere are demanding that people drop this issue.
This shooting incident is one more glimpse at Dick Cheney’s character and it has proven to be thoroughly rotten. We have gotten nothing but lies and disinformation from Dick Cheney and the neocons. If they can’t tell us the truth about a simple hunting accident, then how can we trust them to tell us the truth about Iran. It’s clear the neocons are ginning up a brand new case for war. They’re just as dishonest as ever. They are carrying out foreign policy just as recklessly as their hunting trips. Who knows how many innocent people will die if they are left in power?