More Details On Cheney’s Fox Interview
From the NY Times:
Vice President Dick Cheney said this afternoon that “one of the worst days of my life” occurred on Saturday, when he accidentally shot and injured a friend of his while the two were hunting.
In his first public remarks on the accident, Mr. Cheney also took full responsibility for the shooting that left his friend, Harry M. Whittington, an Austin lawyer, with pellet wounds to his face, neck, chest and rib cage.
“Ultimately, I’m the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry,” he said in a televised interview with the Fox News anchor Brit Hume in Washington. “You can talk about all the other conditions that existed at the time, but that’s the bottom line.
“It was not Harry’s fault,” he went on to say. “You can’t blame anybody else. I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. It’s a day I’ll never forget.”
…In the Fox News interview, Mr. Cheney, dressed in a blue suit, looked slightly shaken as he described the moments right after he pulled the trigger and learning he had hit Mr. Whittington.
“The image of him falling is something that I’ll never be able to get out of my mind,” he said.
He also said he thought it was the right decision to allow Ms. Armstrong become the only voice in describing what had happened.
“I thought that that was the right call,” he said. “I didn’t have any press people with me. I was there on a private weekend with friends.”
UPDATE 3:47 p.m.: You may wonder why Cheney wasn’t questioned about the now-widespread ‘too drunk to talk to the police’ meme. This wasn’t in the story I linked to, but Jeff Goldstein says Cheney admitted to a (singular) beer at lunch; as Jeff said, the accident occurred at dusk. Cheney said there was no drinking by anyone in the party between lunch and the accident. Curiously enough, that almost perfectly fits what Armstrong had already said in her statement (she said there might have been a beer or two at lunch, but that she didn’t think anyone in the party had one), so if there is a cover-up over alcohol involvement, someone forgot to tell Cheney and Armstrong (though I don’t expect that will matter to those spreading the smear)…
UPDATE 4:07 p.m.: Here’s a link:
Cheney said he had had a beer at lunch that day, but nobody was drinking when they went back out to hunt several hours later.
UPDATE 4:52 p.m.: Kos joins the smear campaign with this ridiculous headline…(yeah, by the same token I drank before I came to work today – it was weeks ago, but it was before I came to work today)…
UPDATE 6:36 p.m.: Here’s a complete transcript…
Well, if we set aside for the moment that he is evil incarnate (politically speaking), a prevaricator, and the all time greatest political manipulator (not to mention hyper secretive) then I can believe that he was tremendously upset about shooting his friend and concerned about his friends welfare to such a degree that he was incapable of making rational decisions about what (and when) should be shared with the public.
But that’s just me.
But don’t you understand? The public had a right to know immediately! Because if we had known immediately, rather than 18 hours later, we could have … uh … I’ll get back to you on that.
Cheney Speaks
Ian at Expose The Left has video of Vice President Cheney’s interview with Brit Hume. I watched it. And to …
I haven’t heard anything about this, so this is pure speculation, but how long did it take to notify Whittington’s family? Usually, when something bad happens, the media withholds names until the family and loved ones of the injured are notified. That seems like a perfectly reasonable reason for withholding the information for a day.