the idea that the man cheney shot was not hurt very badly is now pretty clearly false. says the AP:

Texas - The 78-year-old lawyer wounded by Vice President
Dick Cheney in a hunting accident suffered a mild heart attack Tuesday after a shotgun pellet in his chest traveled to his heart, hospital officials said.

Harry Whittington was immediately moved back to the intensive care unit and will be watched for a week to make sure more of the metal pellets do not reach other vital organs. He was reported in stable condition.

Whittington suffered a "silent heart attack" — obstructed blood flow, but without the classic heart-attack symptoms of pain and pressure, according to doctors at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.

The doctors said they decided to treat the situation conservatively and leave the pellet alone rather than operate to remove it. They said they are highly optimistic Whittington will recover and live a healthy life with the pellet in him.

he has a piece of metal in his heart? maybe now whittington will become iron man!

but seriously, i hope he recovers. a lot of unanswered questions remain about the extent of his injuries.

update: barbinMD has a diary on dkos that totally shreds katharine armstrong's statements to the press. apparently armstrong has contradicted herself quite a bit, and according to one version of her story, she wasn't even an eyewitness to the shooting. we might never know what actually happened, but we do know not to put much faith in the details armstrong has offered up.

also, cheney has finally decided to speak publicly about this story (only 4 days after the shooting), in a prerecorded, exclusive "press conference" tonight at 6pm. and the company that'll bring it to you? fox news.

update: although the actual interview won't air for a few more hours, fox has a news story up with a couple brief quotes. while i imagine the interview will be a whitewash to at least some extent, to his credit, cheney admits fault in the incident:

Earlier this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan implied that Whittington did not follow hunting protocol. On Wednesday, the vice president made clear that he took all the blame.

"It was not Harry's fault," he said. "You cannot blame anybody else."¶

Probably too geeky for the general public, but this reminds me of the part of the Lord of the Rings where Frodo is wounded by the Nazgul on Weathertop. A splinter from the Ringwraith's knife was working its way to Frodo's heart which would have turned him into a ringwraith.

Presumably Cheney's weapons are also forged in Mordor and the same thing was happening here. ¶

i'm not really sure which is more geeky: lord of the rings or iron man.

and while we're talking cultural references, i'm also reminded of pulp fiction where vincent accidentally shoots marvin in the face, necessitating a call to the wolf. (in the original script, vincent shoots marvin in the neck, and marvin sits there sputtering blood while vincent debates whether to put him out of his misery.) ¶