Cheney's office denies making imperial demands of disabled vets group

The vice president's office is denying reports that its draconian security demands prompted the Disabled American Veterans organization to uninvite Vice President Dick Cheney to the group's convention next month in Vegas.

According to the New York Daily News, the vice president's office told planners that the Honorable Dick Cheney requires audiences to sit in place for two hours before his arrival, and they may not leave until after his speech is over. With bathrooms located outside the hall, and with many of its 1.4 million members facing daily health challenges, the organization decided to sack the veep.

"It was a huge imposition on our delegates," DAV official David Autry told the newspaper. To make an 8:30 a.m. speech, he added, the vets would have to get up "at oh-dark-30 and try to get breakfast and showered and get their prosthetics on." Then, with bathrooms located outside the hall, they would have to sit for two hours waiting.

Cheney's office says this is all a big misunderstanding, calling the two-hour rule "a recommendation, not a requirement."

And, said his press secretary, it was the vets group, not the vice president, that asked for an 8:30 a.m. speech time.

"The New York Daily News story reads that our office requested that disabled veterans stay in their seats for two hours and not have access to restrooms," said Cheney press secretary Megan Mitchell. "This is simply not true.

In an e-mail to C2C (Countdown to Crawford), she added:

"My understanding is a staff member recommended that audience participants arrive two hours prior to the start of the event to ensure that everyone had ample time to make it through security. We did not request that the event begin at 8:30 in the morning. That was the time proposed by DAV in their letter dated June 5, 2008."

Mitchell also said that she was puzzled by the group's allegations, since security arrangements are not finalized until a few weeks before the event and "we would never want any disabled vet to be put out on our account, that just wouldn't happen."

But Autry, in a subsequent phone conversation with C2C, wasn't buying the vice presidential explanation.

"I appreciate that they're trying to put their spin on it but when [Cheney] spoke to our convention in 2004, that's the the way it went down and we were concerned that was going to happen again."

Autry said the group routinely invites the president and vice president, though George W. Bush has never attended. Disputing Mitchell's assurance that the security arrangements were not yet worked out, he added, "Somebody’s got to face up to fact regardless of what Cheney’s office says, that’s what happened last time and this is what we understood was going to happen this time."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Vice President Dick Cheney addressing U.S. troops at Asad Air Base in Iraq on Dec. 18, 2005. Credit: Lawrence Jackson / Associated Press.

Comments

[jamesincalifornia]

Bush and his gang started the unnecessary war in which many of these veterans were disabled -- and more than 4,000 others were killed. So I can't help but question the sincerity of Cheney's press secretary when she says: "We would never want any disabled vet to be put out on our account." She and Cheney are primarily concerned about the bad publicity, I suspect.

[Archie haase]

I wish veterans disabled issues would go away. The media acts as though this is new breaking news. We all know this man and many in power in DC like this man. We know his respect for veterans is so great that when he was young he refused to see himself as one, yes at one time he commanded the Department that he refused to wear a uniform for, and now is ass commander in chief.