No, Dick Cheney Could Not Have Been Attacked by Someone Hacking His Pacemaker

Running Scared Are You Dick?

With the release of a book by former Vice President Dick Cheney, the news has centered on the fact that he disabled the wireless function of his pacemaker to avoid an attack by some unknown forces.

Mr. Cheney’s cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner of George Washington University, said in the “60 Minutes” interview that he agreed with his patient.

An assassin “on a rope line or in a hotel room next door” could have instructed the defibrillator to kill Mr. Cheney, he said, adding that a wireless programmable device “seemed to me a bad idea for the vice president of the United States.”

Well of course his doctor would agree with the VP.  His doctor is probably a hunting buddy of Mr. Cheney’s and we all know what can happen with that.  But the real answer is that Dick was just being a dick.

“It is almost an infinitely small risk,” Dr. Moss said. “But with the type of terrorism going on now, anything is possible.”

Yeah, the former V.P. was in much greater danger of injuring himself running to the next war to start, or trying to get his former employee Scooter Libby a pardon after lying to the FBI in its investigations of the Valerie leak.  

So why did Mr. Cheney do this?  Well look at his military service record.  Oh, he doesn’t have one.  The war hawk got out of the service on various deferments.  Besides, any terrorist smart enough to construct a device that would hack the pacemaker would be smart enough to be in Silicon Valley, making tens of millions from stock options in his tech company.  Yeah, terrorists are greedy bastards too.