CBS News -- Rove Pushed Cheney to Talk

Rove Pushed Cheney to Talk


(Feb. 16) -- President Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, pushed Vice President Dick Cheney to speak publicly about shooting a fellow hunter, sources tell CBS News.

Rove worried the vice president's silence on the issue was becoming a political problem, CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports.

Cheney is in a "state of meltdown" over shooting his friend and the political fallout it has caused, a source close to the Cheney has told CBS News. On Wednesday, he accepted full blame for the incident and defended the decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day.

Cheney described when he shot 78-year-old Harry Whittington as "one of the worst days of my life."

"I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry," Cheney told Fox News Channel in his first public comments since the shooting Saturday in south Texas.

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familiarity breeds contempt.

And Brit Hume can hardly be called 'the media'.

the disclosure. He worked with Armstrong to do so. Cheney admitted as much.

Edit to add: He may have pushed him to do the Faux News schtick, but he was in on this whole thing right after it happened.

being Cheneyed.

seems to me to run contrary to anyone who is downplaying the seriousness of the wound to Whittington. If, as so many conservative pundits have said, it's no big deal and not a serious injury, why would it be "one of the worst days" of Dick's life? Dick doesn't seem like the kind of guy to have a "meltdown" unless the injury was clearly serious from the moment Whittington fell to the ground.

One of the guys I work with, a right-wing nut job * adorer, and I were talking about it this morning. He was saying the typical "everybody gets hit with bird shot at one time or 'nother, I have. We even shoot at each other for fun!" :wow:(no joke, he said this)

He's from South Texas, his family still lives there, and he knows a lot of people down there who work hunting leases. When I said that I doubted Whittington had superficial injuries, he grudgingly had to agree. He said he called a friend to see if he was working that ranch at the time, he said no, but another friend was. My friend asked about the injuries, the guy said he was hurt pretty bad, it wasn't "peppering".

OK, second hand information, but I know this guy, and he wouldn't offer that information up if it wasn't true.

will probably become more and more common when (if?) more information from Whittington and his doctors is revealed.

I don't have any firsthand info about shotgun wounds, but when I saw the injury sketch on the accident report, my thought was that the pellet pattern was still pretty tight -- just upper chest and neck area, and I suspected a "peppering" incident wouldn't be that tight a pattern.

How interesting. There are two degrees of separation between Cheney and his victim, in that statement.

It's those damn pesky triggers...

Classic "mistakes were made" parsing.

You don't have to be a lawyer to see how language can be used to provide certain loopholes which may be used to slide away from responsibility. This phrase "I pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry" does not sound like anything the average person would say--it's obviously crafted. Cheney does not want to say, "yes I shot Harry" which could imply intent. This leaves it open for any extenuating circumstance to be introduced-- from "I blacked out" to "Harry careened drunkenly into the path of the shot." Yes--there are 2 degrees of separation as u say, Friday's Child.

In contemplating verbal 'degrees of separation' I'm reminded of Mother Goose:

This is the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
(Mother Goose)

KARL!!!!!!!!!!!!