The Buckshot Stops Here

The Birdshot Heard Round The World 

The editorial board here at Paying Attention has decided to bring you a golden oldie, a freaky flashback – literally a blast from the past. On February 11, 2006 one Richard Bruce Cheney, or as most folks know him – Dick – went on an innocent drinking/hunting trip with a good friend. The trip ended in near disaster. I’ll let good friend and cohort S. Gallop take it from here with the story (more or less) as he told it nine years ago this week…  

Cheney Bags Birds And Blasts Buckshot Into Buddy's Brain

 

Corpus Christi, TX

February 13, 2006

This weekend Dick Cheney was enjoying his favorite pastime - hunting defenseless, essentially caged birds.  It should come as no surprise that the man who pushed for pro-torture legislation takes pleasure in this type of leisure pursuit. It is surprising however that Mr. Cheney chose not to waterboard the poor fowl, certainly this would have less traumatic for his hunting buddy as we will see shortly.  Either way it is much more enjoyable than shooting fish in a barrel for a man like Cheney who loves to be chauffeured from bird to bird and then hobble around with his rifle in one hand and his cane in the other, determined to enjoy life to the fullest (in this case by murdering harmless and defenseless little creatures for the fun of it) before his semi-bionic heart explodes into a million pieces. At least this activity provides the illusion that the birds are actually live, wild animals (sort of like Cheney himself).  No matter that these poor birds are starved for several weeks with fishing weights strapped to their legs, have just the right percentage of their feathers coated with crude oil rendering them all-but-flightless and are basically raised as captives in a fenced in area on the ranch of a prominent neo-conservative. 

Unfortunately, on this particular occasion, Cheney did not have Antonin Scalia accompanying him.  This is believed to be because there were no active court cases involving Cheney on which Scalia might be ruling.  Instead, Cheney was “hunting” with Harry Whittington, an Austin lawyer and Bush appointee who presumably was helping Cheney with his legal defense in the Valerie Plame case.  Testimony from Lewis I “Scooter” Libby that Cheney told him to out Plame was made public just days before this “hunting” trip.   Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA expert on Middle East WMDs whose identity was made public as retaliation against her husband and life-long Republican, Joseph Wilson who had the nerve to speak out against certain actions (lies actually) by the administration.  It is also possible that Whittington was helping Cheney with other issues since he serves on the Texas state Funeral Services Commission.  It is not actually know in which capacity Whittington was invited to join Cheney in his sporting foray.  It is suspected that the unfortunate Whittington may have given the Veep some unacceptable advice at just the wrong moment, causing the ever-unstable Cheney to clutch at his chest while forgetting momentarily that he was wielding a shotgun, which unfortunately discharged into the face and upper body of the unwitting Whittington.   

Harry “The Target” Whittington

As one would expect, the Vice-president not only blamed his victim for the alleged mishap but, neglected to report the incident to authorities until well into the day after the shooting.  It is believed that Cheney needed this time to consult with lawyers on whether it would be best to simply dispose of the body or if there was some way to spin the whole event to make it look benign or perhaps even a positive situation to prove what a manly, take-charge kind of guy Cheney really is.  Once it was determined that Whittington should be allowed to live and once the vice president had sobered up enough to appear in public, Cheney decided to have his personal medical team bring Whittington back to consciousness and a level of awareness and physical ability wherein he could sign a series of waivers absolving Cheney of any responsibility in the alleged incident.  In fact, the incident remained a secret until Katharine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch told a local paper of the occurrence.  Fortunately Mr. Cheney was unarmed when he heard that Armstrong “spilled the beans to those M*&%$# F$#%&s in the F&%$ing media.”

After all was said and done Mr. Whittington made a full apology to Cheney and promised never to disrupt his buckshot with his pathetic face again no matter how much he wanted to relive what Whittington called “one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. I cannot thank my good friend – Mr. Cheney sir – for sharing so unselfishly his precious buckshot with my face. He could have chosen any face to shoot up but it was mine, in the end that won the lottery. Again I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused Mr. Cheney sir. Of that I am simply ashamed.”

Although it is certainly tragic that a relatively innocent person has been shot, we all knew it was only a matter of time before Cheney started shooting people personally.  He was perhaps the single most determined, vocal and dishonest supporter of the illegal invasion of Iraq and has been very jealous of all those lucky soldiers in Iraq who get to shoot, torture and generally kick ass every single day as they make their way through the merry minefield that is Iraq.  It is well known that Cheney now regrets having gotten those five deferments (apparently he thought it would look better on his record to have more deferments than DUIs) that kept him safely out of harm’s way during Viet Nam when it was his turn to serve the country he cares so much about.  He never realized what unbridled fun it could actually be to shoot ‘em up.  In fact, on a previous hunting-of-defenseless-birds outing, the Veep and his party of ten (none of whom were shot by Cheney as far as we know) killed 417 out of 500 hapless creatures before passing out drunk and exhausted while having Cheney’s medical team tend to their horrendously blistered trigger fingers.  Despite the apology Cheney has vowed never to go hunting with “that f*&^ing idiot Whittington who doesn’t even have the f%*&ing sense to keep his stupid f*&$ing face away from the business end of my f*&^ing rifle” again.

sg reporting

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