More on why the Cheney shooting is a big deal

In So why make a big deal out of the Cheney shooting? I explained why this incident is an example of the Bush administraition SOP and "the most recent example of why Cheney should not be trusted to lead this country's government in any capacity--now or in the future." In Cheney makes a public statement--finally, I discussed briefly Cheney's interview with Fox News and concluded that "Cheney [is] really sorry--and I'm not talking about apologetic."

I was working on a follow-up to those posts by going through the entire transcript of the interview, and I took a break to see the recent posts of Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. One of those posts had a quote from Mary Matalin claiming that Cheney in no way sent out other people to blame Whittington for the incident. After proving the obvious fact that Matalin is completely full of shit, Josh wrote the following (emphasis in original):

This just isn't even up for debate. Until they were forced to switch course the party line was that Whittington screwed up by sneaking up behind the vice president.

About physical courage I don't know the answer. But all available evidence suggests that the Mr. Cheney is a man of deep moral cowardice. Makes a mistake and shoots his friend; blames the friend. Only he won't do it directly. So he gets underlings to do it for him. Forced to speak out publicly, he appears before a ringer-journalist guaranteed not to press uncomfortable questions.

It's all of a piece with the man's record. He's afraid of accountability. That's why he's such a fan of self-protecting secrecy. That's why he's big on smearing government whistle-blowers. It's really just two sides of the same coin. He's afraid of accountability. It's the same reason why he's such a notorious prevaricator -- lies to avoid accountability.

These are all the hallmarks of a moral coward.

Bingo.