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To hear Vladimir Putin tell it, he learned something about Chechnya last week. After a surprise helicopter tour of the breakaway republic, the Russian President returned to Moscow and informed his Cabinet that the capital, Grozny, looked "horrible." He apparently didn't mention that it looks that way because the Russian military has periodically pounded it with bombs and artillery shells as part of the Kremlin's campaign to quell a separatist uprising in the region. With last week's assassination of Moscow's hand-picked Chechen President, Akhmad Kadyrov, Putin might also have remarked that his strategy for pacifying Chechnya looked pretty horrible too. But...