Reuters:

In a testy exchange with reporters on Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan faced dozens of questions about the propriety of a private citizen making public a shooting incident involving the vice president and whether Cheney had followed White House protocol.

McClellan said President George W. Bush and senior aides were first told by staff in the Situation Room that there had been an accident in Cheney’s hunting party and that the president learned later on Saturday night that the vice president had been the shooter.

“I think he was informed in a relatively reasonable time,” McClellan said at the news briefing.

Did he just say “Well, you guys got it from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the President got it from Wolf Blitzer, and he’s not complaining”?

And he did say, didn’t he, that there was a brief period when Bush didn’t know whether Cheney was alive or dead? (That’s what I love about Scottie. Professional spokesman that he is, you always know clearly exactly what he’s just said.)

On Monday afternoon, about 18 hours after the shooting, McClellan dug in his heels and refused to say exactly when Bush first learned that Cheney had been the shooter. I think we can safely infer that it was a long time after the actual shooting, which occurred at 5:30 pm CST.

Would you be very surprised to know that in McClellan-speak Saturday night can, if necessary, and only in retrospect of course, run all the way to whatever time you wake up on Sunday morning? So if Bush was woken up with the news Sunday, and he was still not fully awake when he received it, that might well qualify as “later on Saturday night”.

McClellan said the vice president’s staff did not tell reporters about the accident on Saturday because they were concerned about getting Whittington medical attention and were still gathering facts.

How many Cheney staffers does it take to change a lightbulb, and how long does it take them? Or if you prefer, how many of Cheney’s non-medical staffers does it take to get Whittington medical attention when the medical staffers are right there on the scene too? I think Scottie just said “It took them a while to get their story straight, okay?”

“The vice president spoke with Mrs. Katharine Armstrong, and they agreed that she should make that information public,” McClellan said. “She was an eyewitness. She saw what occurred and she called her local paper to provide those facts.”

Well, if he can authorize Libby to leak classified information to the press for political purposes, he can surely authorize Armstrong to temporarily become his official spokesman. What would you do if you were surrounded by incompetents?

McClellan declined to say if he was satisfied with the way it was handled.

“You can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job,” he said.

Omigod, he just told Cheney off! Watch him closely (Scottie) the next few days for signs of knife in back or scars thereof.

McClellan said he found out that Cheney was involved at 6 a.m. on Sunday and urged that information be made available as quickly as possible.

It’s like they say, the official spokesman is always the last to know. But it was only 12 hours before they told him, it could have been worse.

Cheney, an experienced hunter, fired his shotgun without realizing that Whittington had approached the group.

McClellan didn’t say that; apparently Armstrong did. Even Scottie wouldn’t call someone who gets off on shooting fish in a barrel an experienced “hunter”.

I don’t know how it looks to you, but from where I’m sitting they are bungling the response to the Cheney shooting every bit as much as they have bungled (and are continuing to bungle) the Abramoff photographs business. Someone is in charge, right, of deciding how they handle stuff like this? Anyone know if that person has recently been taken out and shot?

But if this is how they like to do things now, I hereby volunteer (and I do so hope I’m the first) to be the “journalist” to whom they break the story if anyone ever shoots Cheney. Especially if he’s shot in the bee-hind. I’ll be sympathetic, promise!

Too bad I’m trying to toady up to them now, so I can’t tell you what I really think. Because what I really think is that Cheney had an acid flashback, mistook him for Osama bin Laden, and it took twelve hours for everyone to convince Cheney that he’d got it wrong and he wasn’t going to collect the $25 million bounty.