Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and at least three others died in an explosion Sunday during celebrations at a stadium in the Chechen capital. Now, I freely admit (almost sheepishly) that I know next to squat about the situation in Chechnya, other than it's supposedly a Muslim hotbed. But two things strike me - this will immediately be attributed to al Qaeda (or some faction thereof), and Vlad Putin's taking a page right out of Dubya's playbook:
The blast comes a few weeks after Putin, in his annual state of the nation address, proclaimed the "military phase of the conflict may be considered closed" in Chechnya.