From various pool reports filed by the Chicago Tribune's Mark Silva as he travels with Vice President Cheney.
"...our friendly base bus driver couldn't find these Koele Barracks last night, after our planned brief stop at Bagram turned into a sleep-over. After we nearly had a collision on the tarmac with a fuel tanker, our bus wandered around the base in search of someone who knew where the barracks were."
" They walked toward us speaking cheerfully, but the VP did not appear inclined to even recognize us standing there at the end taking pictures and waiting for crumbs, so we asked, how was the mess?"
"There really was no need for showers this morning, because our plastic-bag chock-full USO care packages came complete with a sealed plastic bag of 'Operation USA All-Purpose Body Wipes.'"
"In the morning, they delivered hot coffee and bagels -- better room service than they had at the Shangri-La in Oman, where we had spent the night before."
"The pool has had no words with the vice president on this day, which makes it no different, so far, from any other day of the weeklong tour of the Pacific Ocean that Cheney made last week."
"A special, warm pooler's nod goes to Lea Anne McBride, of the vice president's office, for the free use of her BlackBerry to file an earlier report from Islamabad. I I'm planning to jump up and down on mine upon return."
"We encountered massive technologixcal trouble here which led to a late and sketchy pool report. Will elaborate later."
"Cheney and Rudd were already seated, smiling, and chatting, in a side meeting room of the Shangri-La hotel's main floor when the pool was ushered in shortly after 3 pm local time Friday for a brief view of the situation. This was really quick, but compared with some of the events that the pool has witnessed in the past few days, this one was documentary-length, perhaps 90 seconds."
"Special note to all you bloggers out there: You have gone way overboard in your rampant speculation about what was not reported in a previous pool report. We had a background briefing with an administration official the other night in Tokyo, and I do not use that term when describing the vice president. We also went deeper than background, which basically means you can't report it. Get it?"
"Our bags spent an additional day there without us as we camped at Bagram."
