The Cheney Shooting as Metaphor

Dick Cheney Is No Sportsman Former-senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) says Vice President Cheney is a “crack-shot”. Most of the people who have been interviewed about Cheney’s accidental shooting of Harry Whittington say that Cheney loves to hunt. Both statements are undoubtedly true. But Cheney likes to hunt in situations where the hunted are kept in cages and released en mass in order to be killed. Cheney likes to hunt game that have been raised for him to kill. I can remember pheasant hunting with my dad in Illinois when I was nine or ten years old. We would go to the woods that were five or six miles from my little hometown. It was my dad and his shotgun against the pheasants that would get flushed out of the brush as we walked through the woods. We stuffed a couple sandwiches in our jacket pockets for lunch. We would bring home two or three pheasants from the day’s shooting. I had the honor of picking up the dead birds by the neck and carrying them to the car. Dad cleaned the birds when we got back home. Mom cut them up but never found all the buckshot. We were advised not to bite down hard on any of the pieces or we might break a tooth. The birds were frozen in our refrigerator and we usually ate them the next Sunday for dinner after church. Dad never offered to teach me about guns and shooting. And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t that keen to learn. Dad usually came back from hunting with a big bruise on his shoulder from the gun’s recoil. But this is the way Cheney goes pheasant hunting. In December 2003, Dick Cheney and his hunting party went to a private hunting club in southwestern Pennsylvania. In a controlled shoot Cheney and his bunch fired their guns when pen-raised pheasants were released from cages. It was reported in newspapers that Cheney shot down the most birds—70. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) was along for the day’s hunt and characterized it as a slaughter. Simpson said that on shooting parties with Cheney, hired men cleaned the dead birds and packed them in dry ice for the flight back to Washington. On the day of the Whittington shooting everyone gathered under an oak tree for lunch. They had sweetbreads, two kinds of salad and charbroiled nilgai (Asian antelope raised and shot on the Armstrong ranch). Cheney supposedly had one beer at lunch. It sounds like the scene from “Citizen Kane” when Kane decides to have a picnic. The picnic involved huge tents, a catered feast and a caravan of equipment, lackeys and servants. Cheney may like to show off his marksman’s prowess, but more than that, he has no patience with a fair fight. Cheney prefers to have the advantage over the game. For Dick Cheney to enjoy a hunt, the prey have to be caged and released like clay pigeons. Which is exactly the way Cheney, Rumsfeld and Little Hitler from Texas fought the unnecessary war in Iraq. You cannot change a man’s nature.