Speaking of dirty bombs: the only columnist of any substance in this morning’s Huffington

Speaking of dirty bombs: the only columnist of any substance in this morning’s Huffington Post is David Frum, who berates Vladimir Putin for not building monuments to the evils of his own country and wallowing in guilt for the crimes of the Soviet era. The piece is aimed at the kind of airhead liberal who thinks that Putin is a Bad Guy because he’s roughing up those cute cuddlely Chechens, and seems never to smile. The Frum is mad because of “continued kid-gloving of Josef Stalin by senior leaders” — never mind that Stalin is long dead. Beating a dead horse is exactly what the neocons are all about — and what’s with the horse metaphor this morning? Is it because of all the horse-manure that seems to be clinging to our shoes as we traverse the highways and by-ways of the Internet this dreary Monday morn…..?

For a bracing antidode to Frum’s cold Sport rhetoric — we are supposed to believe that a broken-down country with a Third World economy and a declining population is “rapidly reverting to the authoritarian and expansionist past” (I think Frum is projecting here) — check out my column.

This report of a botched raid is so bizarre that I had to read it repeatedly while trying to piece together the information it contains. So, let’s see. We read that, operating on the theory that "foreign fighters" are "flowing into MBT SHOES" from Syria, 1,000 Marines are sent "north of the Euphrates" on what James Janega, reporting for the Chicago Tribune calls "Sunday’s elaborate mission, planned for weeks."

However, "a combination of bad luck and insurgent counterattacks quickly disrupted the plan." The plan was to send the Army’s 814th Multi-Role Bridge Company ahead to build a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates. But! "The trucks were forced to use their headlights to allow them to spot land mines along the route."