Regarding the statement: "One significant hole in the Cheney-was-trying-to-sober up theory: After Whittington was shipped off to the hospital Saturday night, Armstrong says the vice president "fixed himself a cocktail back at the house.""

It could be that the Veep was trying to cover the pre-existing use of alcohol with a subsequent drink.

...that after the shooting, "the vice president fixed himself a cocktail back at the house." So very Noel Coward-like, no?

More like, Dick immediately threw back two or three finger's worth of the hardest thing he could get his hands on.

I don't think that's a hole at all. In fact, it could be setting up a defense in case the local cops insisted on talking to Cheney Saturday evening, or wanted him to submit to a breath or blood thest the next day. As a lonttime criminal defense lawyer, i have had quite a few clients flee an accident scene, go home and immdeiately start knocking down drinks, to set up the defense of "I was sober when the accidet occurred, but started drinking after I got home to steady my nerves." Yeah, right, but sometimes it works.

I agree. How is this a hole in his story? If anything it indicates that he was i) looking for cover and/or ii) not so drunk that he couldn't put anything more down.

I disagree strongly with the statement at the end of "Fourteen hours" that Armstrong's report of Cheney's later cocktail back at the house somehow puts a hole in the Cheney-was-lickered-up speculation. It really does the exact opposite!

If a person had an expectation or fear that testing MIGHT be done for blood alcohol level, as Cheney could have, how better to cover it up than with alcohol consumed later on, serving quite well to fog and obscure earlier intoxication? How quickly would his reflexive supporters rush to excuse that later drunkenness by saying this showed just how upset he was over shooting his friend, and oh by the way, now you can't draw ANY conclusions about his state during the actual shooting? Talk about the PERFECT coverup!

Sadly, apparently no one checked Cheney; however, it still remains to be seen if Mr. Whittington's blood alcohol content had been tested and recorded. That proves nothing about the Vice President, but WOULD shoot another HUGE hole in so-called eye-witness testimony about this incident.

Those that are crediting Dick Cheney with finally accepting accountability for the shooting of Harry Whittington (or anything) should take a closer look at his account of the decision to let Ms. Armstrong report the news herself. The Vice President describes her as "an acknowledged expert in all of this," and said, "you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knew and understood hunting." These seem to be endorsements of her initial account of the story. He then admits that he had an active hand in the mechanics of reporting that story: "the first person that we talked with at one point, when Katharine first called the desk to get hold of a reporter, didn't know the difference between a bullet and a shotgun -- a rifle bullet and a shotgun. And there are a lot of basic important parts of the story that required some degree of understanding." That "we" speaks volumes. Those that have been paying attention will remember that in Ms. Armstrong's initial account she insisted that the blame for the shooting lay entirely with Mr. Whittington. If Mr. Cheney helped shape that message then his subequent overtures of guilt are disingenuous. It appears that Mr. Cheney did a stage managed interview with the sympathetic (some would say sycophantic) Fox News Channel in order to cynically give the answers the public have been asking for. Read between the lines, they do not seem to be genuine.

Has anyone asked the Abassador to Switzerland (also a witness - but rarely mentioned) what happened? She was withing yards of the incident. She is a public official. Has any enterprising reporter tried to contact her? Has she refused comment? If so, why? If not, WTF are our world class "reporters" doing exactly?

The news that Cheney fixed himself a cocktail after Whittington went to the hospital is not a "significant hole in the Cheney-was-trying-to-sober up theory." It could actually serve as an alibi. If he were later found to be under the influence of alcohol, he could say "Of course I am. I was so upset that I went straight to the house and started kicking them back. But I didn't have anything to drink before the accident."

My brother used this scam once when he had a wreck after drinking. He had a 6-pack in the car. He climbed into the front passenger seat and began downing the beers. Witnesses at the scene saw him do this. It made it impossible for anyone to say what condition he had been in at the time of the wreck and gave an explanation for the alcohol in his system upon the arrival of the police.

Why does it matter if he was drunk or not when he accidentally shot his friend? What possible difference does it make? This feeding frenzy over a simple accident is only giving ammunition to those who say that the left blow everything out of proportion just because we hate Bush and Cheney so much. Aren't there some real issues that we could focus on?

Dick Cheney is a sick man. He's had multiple heart attacks, aneurysms in arteries in both his legs, emergency hospitalizations due to pulmonary edema ("fluid on the lung"); he was lately seen using a cane and is known to wear two different-sized shoes which some people insist is due to "an old football injury", but experienced doctors and nurses say it could be due to lower body edema brought on by congestive heart failure. Sometimes the edema is "lopsided" --- affecting one extremity more than the other --- especially if poor circulation has resulted in phlebitis or a thrombus in one leg. This necessitates a larger shoe size for one foot.

Cheney has a defibrillator in order to override cardiac arrhythmias. As long as we're speculating here, suppose he had an arrhythmia this weekend while hunting. I would guess that his defibrillator would be timed to a certain interval of a few seconds.. it wouldn't kick in immediately otherwise the people with implantable defibrillators would be getting shocked all the time while snoring or gasping or while watching a scary movie. So Cheney would have time to get symptomatic before his defibrillator kicked in, maybe by getting dizzy, by starting to pass out. Suppose Harry Whittington saw Cheney get woozy - he'd probably go towards Cheney to help him, getting close enough so that he could be seriously "peppered" at close range if the vice president were to get jolted by his defibrillator while holding a shotgun.

I would then imagine (purely speculating, remember) that both men would need to be treated and transported to a hospital. Cheney travels with medical personnel, but they are trained to treat the vice president for a cardiac episode, not to treat the vice president AND a 78 year old trauma victim (literally) in the field. Pandemonium would ensue. This could account for confusion at sorting out the facts. The Secret Service and medical personnel see Cheney falter (and possibly fall) in the field, they see Whittington go towards Cheney, they see Whittington fall. Holy cow. What happened? Have both men been shot? How did it happen? What kind of hunting accident is this? Is it in fact an accident? These are the questions they would ask themselves while running to the men, treating them on the scene and transporting them. What the hell happened? Keep in mind these guys need to make sure the men receive top shelf medical care when they get to the hospital while putting the hospital, local law enforcement and local media on lockdown.

This would explain the lack of information flow. Cheney would need to be observed for several hours, getting serial EKGs and having blood tests drawn for enzymes to check for serious cardiac involvement. This would explain why Cheney didn't speak to the sheriff for hours - he was a patient being observed by his private physicians.

I think Cheney's medical condition had more to do with this incident and its strange unfolding more than alcohol or a leathery blonde purported "mistress" in the hunting party. But it's all speculation, of course.

To me, what is most bizarre about the entire incident is that ailing old codgers insist on being driven to a grassy field to shoot small birds. And people let them do it.