At Last - The Story From a Talking Dick!

Just a couple of random thoughts about Dick Cheney’s recent interview with Brit Hume:

First of all, the biggest load of crap dumped by Cheney appears to be during this interchange:

Hume: Well, obviously, you could have put the statement out in the name of whoever you wanted. You could put it out in the name of Mrs. Armstrong, if you wanted to. Obviously, that's — she's the one who made the statement.

Cheney: Exactly. That's what we did. We went with Mrs. Armstrong. We had — she's the one who put out the statement. And she was the most credible one to do it because she was a witness.

Then how does Cheney explain this account of the incident:

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.

So the most credible witness didn’t even know someone had been shot until after Cheney’s security detail arrived on the scene! If the goal was to have the statement come from the most credible witness who was not Cheney, how about, say, the other hunter who was standing right next to Cheney when the shot was fired? That would be Pamela Willeford, the Ambassador to Switzerland, who has apparently gone missing. [credit to Emptywheel for being the first blogger to bring some of these discrepancies to my attention]

In another matter related to Armstrong’s credibility, there was this interchange:

Hume: Was anybody drinking in this party?

Cheney: No. You don't hunt with people who drink. That's not a good idea. We had ...

Hume: So he wasn't, and you weren't?

Cheney: Correct. We'd taken a break at lunch — go down under an old — ancient oak tree there on the place, and have a barbecue. I had a beer at lunch.

Meanwhile, the "most credible" witness had this to say:

None in the hunting party was drinking alcohol, Armstrong said. "No, zero, zippo and I don't drink at all," she said. "No one was drinking."

Very observant witness, huh? And as any traffic cop will tell you, “a beer” undoubtedly means “several beers,” and “a couple of beers” undoubtedly means “a whole lot of beers!” So unless Armstrong was actually the one drinking the beers and ended up blacking out, she wasn’t witnessing a whole lot of anything that day!

Finally, I couldn’t help but notice the following series of answers:

Hume: How long have you known (Whittington?)

Cheney: I first met him in Vail,Colorado, when I worked for Jerry Ford about 30 years ago

Hume: Describe the setting.

Cheney: It's in south Texas . . . I've gone there, to the Armstrong ranch, for years. The Armstrongs have been friends for over 30 years.

Hume: How far away from you was he?

Cheney: I'm guessing about 30 yards.

Somehow, I am getting the mental picture of the delay before reporting the incident being used to run focus groups to determine the specific number that is the most likely to be blindly accepted by the general public when used as a part of an elaborate lie! Looks like the number is 30!

And for those conservatives who might suggest that I'm clinging to this story longer than it warrants, I offer you this promise:

I will quit talking about Dick Cheney shooting his friend with birdshot sooner than you were willing to quit talking about Bill Clinton shooting his friend with . . . well, you get the picture!