Did Cheney Really Shoot Whittington?

First of all, let me begin this web with Alan Dershowitz's lawyerly observation:

Why would a media-savvy and clever man like Dick Cheney delay notifying the press and the police about an accident when a) he knew it would eventually be covered by the press and b) he knew he would be criticized for delaying release of the story?

A simple cost/benefit analysis suggests that he (or those advising him) must have believed that there was more to be gained than lost by a 14 hour delay that would eventually be made public. It is likely, therefore, that something happened during that 14 hour period which was worth the negative costs of the delay.

Something jumped out at me in this WaPo article:

Salinas and San Miguel [investigating officers] said they went to the site of the shooting. They said Whittington had been standing in the bed of a dried pond, several feet downhill from where Cheney and another hunter, Pamela Pitzer Willeford, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, were standing as they were shooting quail.

See it? The third hunter. U.S. Ambassador, Pamela Pitzer Willeford.

Keep that in mind, now. A tall blond...on a hunting trip...walking next to the VP...the third hunter. That's been speculated here...

But, what if she's the one who shot Whittington and Cheney is taking the fall for her in an attempt to keep probing eyes away from questions like who she is and why she's there?

Look at what we know. The weapon was a 28 gauge shotgun, what's been described as a Girl's Gun...and Cheney is an experienced hunter and would he have committed such a screw-up?

Also, and this is what got me thinking: Scott McClellen, during that initial press conference kept repeating an odd story line.

The initial report that we received was that there had been a hunting accident. We didn't know who all was involved, but a member of his party was involved in that hunting accident. And then additional details continued to come in overnight.

Additional details kept coming in overnight. David Gregory kept pressing him, but he did it from the perspective that there was NO DOUBT that it was the VP who pulled the trigger, and it made for a really odd disconnect; like they were talking about two separate events. Go read the entire press briefing with the idea that it was still up for grabs as to who the shooter was, and it fits in a very odd way.

Then we found out later that Armstrong's story is completely non-credible and the result is that no one really saw the actual shooting.

Think about it. If it came out that Pamela Willeford had shot Whittington while standing right next to Darth Cheney during a weekend get-away hunting trip at a duck ranch, the media frenzy would have shown its spotlight on her and the VP. As it now stands, we're all talking about booze and incompetence...which is bad, but it ain't as bad as the alternative. After all, we know that in order to get impeached, the crime needs to be about sex.

Just sayin'.