Word: cheney
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...less than a second, less time than it takes to tell," Dick Cheney mused last week, his quail-hunting expedition had gone "from what is a very happy, pleasant day with great friends in a beautiful part of the country, doing something I love-to, my gosh, I've shot my friend. I've never experienced anything quite like that before." It was perhaps the most eloquent, emotionally unguarded moment from the notoriously buttoned-up Vice President. He seemed stunned, uncertain for once. And the haunted look in his eyes reminded me of what soldiers in Vietnam used to call...
...wonder we're spellbound by Dick Cheney's hunting accident, despite the fact that no one died and the responsible party apologized (though not, perhaps, as promptly as he might have). It may be a small story in an age of big ones - an odd minor scene in history's bloody pageant - but if you let it sink down inside your mind and resonate there for just a little while, you have to confess that it?s potent, mythic stuff...
...many of them don't know the difference between a .28-gauge shotgun and an any-caliber rifle. The chief difference, of course (and the relevant one here) is that a shotgun of this modest size barely constitutes a serious weapon when loaded with birdshot of the type that Cheney used. Its hard enough for such pellets to pierce a quail's heart, let alone penetrate a man's, and the fact that one did so is a testament not to Cheney's gross negligence (that question still needs more exploring) but to his supreme unluckiness...
...playfulness of the sport may seem distasteful. To shoot at feathered things while obliging other folks to shoot at much larger creatures that shoot back doesn't seem right somehow, or wise. At some poetic level it tempts the gods, and the gods are always armed. For Cheney, that's the painful, humbling part. For the public, it's the engrossing, mythic part. The press may be mauling the story and prolonging it, but the accident's strange allegorical allure is beyond its power to affect...
...hunting accident on the Armstrong ranch. He told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times newspaper he was barbecuing with his family when he was reached. Then, about 10 minutes later, a Secret Service agent called the sheriff at home to officially notify them of the accident and the involvement of Cheney. Kirk, meanwhile, had been rebuffed at the Armstrong gate by a Border Patrol agent who knew nothing about the accident. Salinas says in his report he decided not to go immediately to the ranch after talking to Constable Ramiro Medellin Jr., the former county sheriff. It?s not clear...