Attytood: Blackhawk Gone: Why wasn't Whittington airlifted?

Blackhawk Gone: Why wasn't Whittington airlifted?

Here's just one more unanswered question about Dick Cheney's shooting of his 78-year-old friend last Saturday.

Numerous news accounts in recent years suggest that the vice president, with his history of four heart attacks, is almost always accompanied by a medical team and by Blackhawk helicopters, even when he is hunting in remote rural locations, as he all too frequently does.

Cheney has apparently never needed that type of medical evacuation. But on Saturday, his hunting pal Harry Whittington did. Indeed, news accounts say that Cheney's full-time medical team was on the scene and aided the seriously wounded man.

But where were the Blackhawks? If they were on the Armstrong Ranch, why were they not used for this type of emergency operation that they had long rehearsed? If the Blackhawks were not there, why not, considering they've reportedly been there for his other trips?

Instead, the splayed and profusely bleeding Whittington was driven to a small rural hospital -- even though when he got there, doctors then realized his condition was critical enough to airlift him, by a private helicopter, to the bigger medical center in Corpus Christi.

The bottom line is that it took almost two-and-a-half hours and probably more to get this wounded man to the best trauma center in South Texas. Whittington, of course, is a private citizen. Do you think it would have taken that long if Cheney had been wounded or stricken. It seems like either a case of unequal treatment, or incompetency.

We've been meaning to look into this all week. In August of 2004, we took our annual family vacation in the Jackson Hole area, coincidentally while the vice president was also there. And during our stay, all the locals were buzzing about this incident, which actually involved buzzing...buzzing helicopters. Cheney's helicopters:

Still, nothing quite prepared people for the brazen invasion earlier this month atop the normally bucolic Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. In full view of rafters, tourists and residents, two Black Hawk helicopters skimmed the river.

Angry river users shook their fists. Wildlife tumbled over from the choppers' downdraft, witnesses said. Plants were rippling in the high winds, they said.

"They were at tree-top levels," said Martin Hagen, a captain who navigates the river for a rafting company. "Here you go out for a quiet day along the river and suddenly comes this great noise. It was a big, big disturbance."

Another boat captain, Reed Finley, had just dropped passengers ashore when the choppers buzzed three times.

"They sent an osprey into a tailspin, flipping it over," he said. "It was obnoxious."

The park rangers at Grand Teton National Park were flooded with complaints. The lead ranger called the Secret Service detail guarding Cheney to complain because he had no other number: The National Park Service has no way to communicate with military aircraft. The choppers were violating park service rules not to fly lower than 2,000 feet.

What were the helicopters doing? You guessed it.

Kim Tisor, a spokeswoman at Ft. Carson, Colo., where the helicopters are based, said the Black Hawks were practicing medical evacuation. As she put it, "a high-security mission" in the area (that is, Cheney) means that the helicopters need to practice nearby.

Helicopters are never far from Cheney when he hunts. Like in 2003 in Wyoming:

A trio of Blackhawk helicopters carrying Vice President Dick Cheney used protected land in Puzzleface Ranch as a landing and launching pad Sunday, witnesses reported.

The administration's mechanical birds buzzed Skyline Pond, which is osprey and trumpeter swan habitat, 18 times through three landings and takeoffs, neighbor J.C. Whitfield said Tuesday.

Or last year in Montana:

Whether because of security concerns or because Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to protect a favorite fishing hole, few details about his visit to the Bighorn River were being released publicly.

Cheney flew into Billings early Monday morning and headed down to Fort Smith to do some fishing. His plane, Air Force Two, was accompanied by a C-17 cargo jet, two Chinook helicopters and two Blackhawk helicopters. Beyond that, mum has been the word on the vice president's visit.

And remember his famous hunting trip with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia?

Two military Black Hawk helicopters were brought in and hovered nearby as Cheney and Scalia were whisked away in a heavily guarded motorcade to a secluded, private hunting camp owned by an oil industry businessman.

Now, after all that, here's what happened when there was an actual medical emergency. The Corpus Christi Caller-Times (has that paper put itself on the map, or what?) had an outstanding medical timeline yesterday. We'll summarize the highlights:

5:30 to 5:50 p.m. Saturday: Whittington is shot.
6 p.m. Cheney's medical team makes two decisions. They alert an outside helicopter service (where were those Blackhawks?), but they decided to drive Whittington to the small, closer (but not that close) hospital in Kingsville, Tex.
6:20 p.m. (20 minutes later!) Ambulance arrives.
6:45-6:50 p.m. Whittington arrives at the first hospital, after a 25-30 minute drive.
7:07 p.m. Doctors immediately realize that Whittington needs to go to the trauma center. The outside helicopter service is called a second time.
7:29 p.m. Air ambulance arrives at Kingsville.
8:19 p.m. Whittington finally arrives at the Corpus Christi hospital.

That's anywhere from two hours and 49 minutes to 2 hours and 29 minutes, for an elderly man who's been blasted in his face and torso with birdshot, with fragments in his heart and possibly other vital organs.

We'll ask again one more time. Would it have taken that long for Cheney, a vice president who's known to live in the style of a monarch? Something doesn't add up here.

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