For the whole of its return journey from Munabao in India to Karachi — a total travel time of over 16 hours — the train did not have any functioning toilets, because of lack of water. On the Zero Point platform, passengers were not able to even purchase drinking water or any beverage or eatables. Given that they were going to pass through a desert area — especially in the direction of India, where the Indian desert begins as the train leaves Munabao and heads for Jodhpur — this negligence is inexcusable. It would be good if the PR makes sure that such facilities are in place soon, both at Zero Point station and on the Thar Express itself. After all, it seems ironic that on its first-ever run across the desert, the train did not have any water on its way back from India.

AT LEAST it is out in the open. Everyone now knows what the vice-president of the United States enjoys doing for rest and recreation. He likes to shoot defenceless little birds. And sometimes, just sometimes — okay, let’s not be unfair, it’s only once in a while — he aims for elderly lawyers.

The violent pastime conforms to what is known of this inveterate hawk’s character. Unlike many other Americans of his generation, Dick Cheney has no combat experience because he had “other priorities than military service” during the period of US aggression against Vietnam. Unlike Bill Clinton, Cheney didn’t dodge the draft because he opposed the war: he was quite happy for it to be fought, as long as others did the fighting.

His philosophical position evidently remains unchanged. He is remarkably enthusiastic about young American men and women risking their lives in the Iraqi quagmire, for all the wrong reasons. He personally prefers to go after easier quarries. Ducks and quails, unlike Iraqi insurgents, don’t fight back. And hardly anyone objects to canine involvement in going after the prey.

Besides, there appears to be little skill involved in the sorts of hunts Cheney participates in. For instance, an account of a Cheney-led pheasant shoot in Pennsylvania two years ago says that when the shooting party arrived, gamekeepers released 500 pen-raised pheasants from their cages. Not long afterwards, 417 of the birds lay dead; 70 of the kills were attributed to the vice-president. After lunch, it was the turn of mallard ducks to face the wrath of the gunmen.

Frequent participation in “canned hunting” expeditions — so called because the birds or beasts in question have little chance of escape — may explain why Cheney finds it hard to understand the inability of tens of thousands of heavily-armed American troops to “pacify” Iraq. Had he spent some time in Vietnam, he may have acquired a sharper appreciation of how foreign military occupation motivates those at the receiving end to resist and retaliate.

It is extremely unlikely, of course, that either Vietnam or Iraq has lately been on Cheney’s mind, in the wake of what he eventually described as the worst day of his life thus far. In fact, some of the spin conveys the impression that it is Cheney who is the victim in this episode, rather than 78-year-old Texas lawyer Harry Whittington, who was peppered with birdshot all over his face and chest when the vice-president turned around and mistook him for a covey of quail.

First off the mark was Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the 50,000-acre ranch where the incident occurred. She implied it was Whittington’s fault that he got shot, because he did not announce his presence as he trudged towards Cheney, who was facing the other way. It’s possible that Whittington’s only fault lay in assuming that the vice-president would not pull the trigger without a good look in the direction his barrel was pointing towards — which might suggest he simply didn’t know Cheney well enough.

If this thought crossed Armstrong’s mind, she did not share it with the press. Many American commentators have expressed their consternation over the fact that it was Armstrong — rather than Cheney’s office or the White House — who first broke the news, and that too to her local newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. There have been contradictory statements about whether this course was chosen by the vice-president or Armstrong’s family. Chances are it was a collaborative effort.

At one point it was said that Katharine Armstrong was picked as a semi-official spokesperson because she was an eyewitness. Strictly speaking, that may be true — she was seated in a vehicle about a hundred metres away. It does not necessarily follow, however, that she clearly saw everything. By her own admission, when she saw medical assistants rushing towards the hunting party, she initially thought the vice-president, a chronic heart patient, had suffered a coronary setback.

Not a particularly reliable eyewitness, then. At any rate, Armstrong went out of her way to dismiss Whittington’s injuries and superficial and inconsequential, saying the blast “knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open.” That contradicts Cheney’s account, according to which Whittington wasn’t immediately able to talk. Armstrong’s contention that no alcoholic beverages were served at lunch before the shooting party advanced against the quails was again contradicted by the vice-president’s admission that he’s had a beer during the feast.

There has been some conjecture in the American press that Cheney and/or Whittington may have imbibed more than that before setting out. A peep into Cheney’s past reveals two drink-driving convictions, albeit more than 40 years ago. George W. supposedly stopped hitting the bottle when he found God. There is no evidence that his supposed deputy underwent a comparable experience.

Conjecture and contradictions aside, there was little danger that anything in conflict with the vice-president’s interests would escape Armstrong’s lips, given her family’s staunch Republicanism: Katharine’s late father, Toibin, was a leading Bush fund-raiser, while her mother, Anne, has served as co-chairperson of the Republican National Committee, White House counsellor to Richard Nixon, ambassador to Britain under Gerald Ford, and co-chairperson of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. What’s more, she was a member of Halliburton’s board when the controversial firm hired Cheney as its CEO.

Luckily for Cheney — or perhaps luck has nothing to do with it — Whittington too has turned out to be completely loyal. On emerging from hospital, after suffering a minor heart attack because of one of the scores of pellets embedded in his body, he said: “My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice-President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week. We send our love and respect to them, as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we’ve had to deal with.”

That doesn’t sound like the spontaneous statement of a man emerging from hospital, in an ostensibly free country, with countless bits of lead under his skin. Was he tutored? Did Karl Rove add to his woes by giving him a little speech to memorize? Would his utterance have sounded considerably more surreal had been subjected to this sort of indignity by, say, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il? It’s not hard to imagine something along the lines of: “I had the unique privilege of being chosen for target practice by our beloved president. My family and I humbly apologize if my injuries have caused the Dear Leader the slightest inconvenience. Our joy will know no bounds should my services ever be required again....”

There have, meanwhile, been reports of tensions between presidential and vice-presidential staff over the manner in which the disclosure of the incident was handled. Bush’s spokesman Scott McLellan made a fool of himself by joking about the shooting just after Whittington’s condition had temporarily deteriorated, because no one had told him about it. There have even been suggestions about efforts to replace Cheney with a more viable Bush successor: the name of Condoleezza Rice has been mentioned in this regard.

That may be too much to hope for. The president has said his deputy handled the situation “just fine”. And if that doesn’t sound too effusive, Bush also described Cheney’s explanation as “strong and powerful”. As strong and powerful, presumably, as the reasons for invading Iraq. “The vice-president was involved in a terrible accident and it profoundly affected him.” noted the president, blurring the distinction between gunman and victim.

Coaxing Cheney to make himself available for comment apparently took a bit of effort — and several days — and even then the question of a press conference did not arise. To no one’s surprise, the veep chose to air his woes on the unfair, imbalanced and unfailingly administration-friendly Fox network, moaning about how awful he felt but completely unrepentant about the delay in disclosure and the devious manner in which it was handled. This, after all, is the man who lives by the motto: “Never explain, never apologize.”

Not surprisingly, many Americans find that attitude at odds with their concept of how a democracy should function. Of course, the US falls short of the mark in many other ways, too, but perhaps none so aggravating as Dick Cheney. Hence, Scott McLellan wasn’t the only person who celebrated the veep’s discomfiture with a wisecrack: political commentators as well as TV talk-show hosts had a field day.

Their efforts ranged from a Democratic strategist’s “Bush-Quail ‘06” to David Letterman’s: “The real question now is — is this a one-time thing or will the vice-president try to kill again?” Jon Stewart produced a colour-coded threat chart. And, inevitably, someone recalled what George W. had said about his running mate back in 2000: Cheney, he had told the Houston Chronicle, is “somebody who is going to shoot straight with the American people”.

I know what some of you must be thinking at this juncture. Well, stop right now. It ain’t going to happen. There isn’t a hope in hell of Dick dragging along his understudy the next time he gets trigger-happy. Nor is his close friend and colleague Don Rumsfeld game for a turkey shoot, despite the possibility that it could offer him an opportunity to reprise his best line: “Stuff happens.”

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