Posted by Mark Silva at 6:44 a.m. CST
MUSCAT, Oman–Vice President Dick Cheney rode an Airstream trailer into Pakistan and Afghanistan, and he rode the Airstream out of Kabul wearing cowboy boots.
He also traveled in the belly of “The Spirit of Strom Thurmond.”
After flying more than halfway around the world in the standard-issue Air Force Two, a military version of the Boeing 757-200 whose electrical system had started acting up someplace between Sydney and Singapore, the vice president boarded a much less identifiable military transport for quick trips in and out of true hot spots: Islamabad, Pakistan, and Bagram Air Base and Kabul in Afghanistan.
This particular C-17, a hulking gray cargo jet out of Charleston, S.C., is dubbed The Spirit of Strom Thurmond, with the name painted decoratively in black above the front passenger door where Cheney boarded.
Inside, the vice president’s senior staff–as well as the deputy director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes–sat in airliner-style seats that had been installed in the forward section of the cargo bay.
The C-17 that ferried Cheney from Oman to Pakistan to Afghanistan and back to Oman. Photo by Mark SilvaBehind them, a silvery-steel-skinned trailer minus wheels had been slid into place, chained down at the floor and strapped in with canvas belting. This wasn’t your average RV.
It actually was three pods slid together to form a home away from home. But it bore the unmistakable aerodynamic shape of America’s favorite trailer. And it was indeed a product of Airstream Inc., out of Jackson Center, Ohio, with an official stamp of inspection by the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Inside, the wood-paneled cabin has dark blue-gray carpeting and plush gray leather seats, and recessed ceiling lighting. Horizontal shades cover the windows. A Sony TV and DVD player are mounted in the wall above the desk in a cabin that has several comfortable seats that would seem to double for bedding in recline. On the desk below the TV sat a copy of “A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900,” by Andrew Roberts, during the brief time the vice president spoke with reporters about Tuesday’s attack at Bagram.
As we boarded the aircraft in Oman, Cheney was settled in the Airstream for the nearly three-hour journey to Islamabad in the belly of the Spirit of Strom.
This wasn’t nearly as nice as the quarters where the vice president had spent the night before–the Shangri-La resort on the coast of the Gulf of Oman outside Muscat.
All hotels have names. This one earned it.
The resort in this Boca Raton of the Strait of Hormuz is a complex of luxurious hotels nestled along the beach and cradled by a low ridge of steeply sloped, sandy-rock mountains that frame the coastline.
They apparently had to blast serious holes through the hard hills along the coast to build the steep, winding roads leading up and down into the Shangri-La. But this is a country that puts out 750,000 barrels of oil a day.
Oman has long been a low-key ally of the United States. The failed U.S. attempt to rescue 53 American hostages from the former U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1980 was launched from Oman’s Masirah air base.
The vice president flew the Spirit of Strom from Oman–leaving not from an air base but from the Royal Flight center at the Muscat airport–and traveled just 30 miles off the coast of Iran en route to Islamabad. He spent less than four hours on the ground in Pakistan, then made an hour-long hop to Bagram in Afghanistan. It was raining when he arrived, and the weather was growing worse by the hour, scuttling plans to travel later that day to Kabul for a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Kabul already had snow on the ground.
The Spirit of Strom, and Cheney, spent an unexpected overnight at Bagram. The Spirit sat out on the tarmac overnight, an awesome gray presence in the gloomy wintry mix of rain and snow that grounded the plane until it took off about noon local time Tuesday for the 18-minute flight into Kabul.
Cheney was in the capital for a little more than two hours, meeting Karzai over lunch at the fortified palace. A tray of coffee and juice greeted the American entourage upon arrival, and the formal dining room was set with a long table. The vice president had reached the palace in an armored motorcade that weaved between concrete and sandbag barricades erected along the route.
It was cool in Kabul, and the snow that reportedly had prevented our visit the day before had largely melted. The sun was peeking out through the cloud cover as Cheney’s motorcade left the palace, kicking up a cloud as it slalomed its way back to the airport, and the Spirit of Strom.
