It is a bit surprising Russia would allow a visit from a man who took up arms against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Proving once again that he has the reasoning skills of a termite-infested and rotting fence post, Dana Rohrabacher had the bright idea that he and fellow geniuses Michele Bachmann and Steve King should go to Russia to get to the bottom of why Russian and US intelligence agencies did not jointly predict and prevent the Boston Marathon bombing. From the announcement of the trip on Rohrabacher’s website (oh, wait, it looks like Rohrabacher just crossposted the ABC News story transcribed from what Rohrabacher’s office fed them):

A delegation of American lawmakers will travel to Russia next week in part to investigate last month’s Boston Marathon bombings, ABC News has learned.

The group, led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., wants to find out why a 2011 Russian request that the United States investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston bombers, did not raise more red flags.

The Russians  offered a vague warning that Tsarnaev planned to link up with extremist groups abroad, but an FBI investigation yielded no evidence to support those claims at the time. The lawmakers also want to know why  subsequent U.S. requests for additional information about Tsarnaev went unanswered by the Russians.

“If there was a distrust, or lack of cooperation because of that distrust, between the Russian intelligence and the FBI, then that needs to be fixed and we will be talking about that,”  Rohrabacher, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, told ABC News by telephone.

“Our goal is to use Boston as an example, if indeed there was something more, that should’ve been done that wasn’t because of a bad attitude,” Rohrabacher added.

Remarkably, the ABC News transcription goes on to cite Rohrabacher wanting to overcome any “lingering mistrust between the former Cold War rivals”. And yet, neither ABC News nor Rohrabacher seem to give any thought to the fact that back in the heady days when the US was backing Osama bin Laden and other mujahideen fighters against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Rohrabacher himself decided to play dress-up, grab a gun and go to Afghanistan to join the fun in hunting Russkies. Oh well, forgive and forget, I guess.

Unlike when he tried to visit Afghanistan and was denied entry because of his rabble-rousing past and continued meddling, Rohrabacher was allowed entry to Russia. Rohrabacher’s goal wasn’t only to talk to Russians, however. Since the Boston bombers were ethnic Chechens, it appears that the great Congressman decided he had to visit himself some “Chechnyans”. That’s right, in a reprise of Rohrabacher’s infamous Congressional hearing on Balochistan where he mangled the pronunciation of the region, Rohrabacher now has shown his cultural sensitivity once again by mangling another name:

Rohrabacher chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats. Yet somehow he manages to refer to the inhabitants of Chechnya as “Chechnyans.”

But how was he going to meet some “Chechnyans”? Remarkably, he engaged the assistance of a professional from the world of dressing up and grabbing guns for entertainment. None other than Steven Seagal made arrangements for the Congressional delegation to visit Chechnya (from the same link with the “Chechnyans” bit):

The late Gore Vidal once said that the three saddest words in the English language were Joyce Carol Oates. Now here are the ten saddest: “The CODEL’s visit to Chechnya was facilitated by Steven Seagal.”

CODEL stands for Congressional delegation, and the speaker here is the spokeswoman for Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California. In the Congressman’s prospective entourage were fellow Republicans Michele Bachmann (who has just announced that, six months after winning re-election, her services to the great state of Minnesota will draw to a close in 2014), Steve King (Iowa), Paul Cook (California) and two Democrats, Bill Keating (Massachusetts), and Steve Cohen (Tennessee). The purpose of their prospective visit with the tubby action hero with hair plugs that scream graft-versus-host? To suss out more information on the Boston Marathon attacks, which of course Seagal is expertly placed to facilitate.

Remarkably, Seagal has already been involved in US-Russian relations through his “friendship” with Vladimir Putin, resulting in Seagal advocating on behalf of fewer restrictions in the US on sales of Russian rifles.

Perhaps because the delegation included more than just Rohrabacher, Bachmann and King, it appears that cooler heads have prevailed and the trip to Chechnya did not take place. Politico ascribed the scrubbing of the trip to “several members” being “uncomfortable about traveling into a region ruled by a Kremlin-backed strongman with a spotty human rights record”. Rats, I was so looking forward to how the “Chechnyan” press would spell Rohrabacher’s name.  In its coverage of Rohrabacher mangling the pronunciation of Balochistan, one Pakistani paper called him “Donna Rohrbacher” in what I think was a return of Rohrabacher’s insult.