Bloggers decide whether the new plan to arm and train aggrieved Sunnis in Iraq to fight al-Qaida is a good one. They also war-game the deployment of the Pentagon's proposed "gay bomb" and give an F for effort to a Russian ninja terrorizing the Italian countryside.

Frenemies in Mesopotamia: A new strategy in Iraq will attempt to curb al-Qaida violence by funding and training Sunni Arabs to war against the terrorist group. Recruits to this new "outreach" program may include ex-members of al-Qaida—so the plan could give government cash to the killers of U.S. soldiers. The morality and strategic efficacy of such a policy has been sussed out by all the usual suspects.

Bush-critical conservative Andrew Sullivan "can see the rationale, and it's hard to second-guess ground-operations. In general, giving local commanders the flexibility to exploit rifts between our enemies is a good thing. … But directly arming them is a high-risk strategy … because they could turn around and use those weapons against U.S. troops in a heartbeat (we're already training Shiite militias to do the same thing)."

Liberal Matt Yglesias thinks the United States should hand the Sunnis the entire struggle against al-Qaeda: "It's simply impossible for the United States of America to be the main sponsor of a credible nationalist resistance to al-Qaeda. The only way to take advantage of Sunni Arab discontent with foreign fighters in Iraq is for us to step out of the way and stop trying to micromanage events. Instead, though, we insert ourselves into every embryonic promising trend and wind up wrecking it."

To which righty Rich Lowry at the National Review's The Corner responds: "The problem with that, as far as I can tell, is that if we absented ourselves, al Qaeda would prevail. At least that's what guys on the ground seem to think."

Lefty Tom Freeman at Freemania worries that if the plan is successful, "those militias will win popular appeal among their religious constituency. The logic of this (and I know logic can be hard to come by in US Iraq policy) is that more political legitimacy will accrue to these groups rather than to the national authorities. This would mirror the support among Shia populations for groups such as those linked to Muqtada al-Sadr."

At Children of the Revolution, "Marzuq in Exile" writes: "While there are minor divisions among the Sunnis which the U.S. commanders are hoping to exploit, it seems highly unlikely that the loyalty of any Sunni muslim will suddenly fall in the opposite direction behind the Shiites and the U.S. installed Iraqi government. … We have spent more than $15 billion to build up the Iraqi army and police force, both comprised mainly of Shiites. Now we're spending even more money to build up a Sunni militia? It's almost as if the military were deliberately setting up a deeper future conflict to justify a never-ending occupation."

Read more about arming the Sunnis.

Queen for a day: The Pentagon confirms that the military once researched a plan to develop a bomb that would purportedly use hormones to turn soldiers in the field gay. That way, they would be too busy canoodling each other to fight Americans. It's almost too easy sometimes.

Liberal Michael J. W. Stickings at The Reaction wonders, "[W]hy didn't they drop Playboy centerfolds behind enemy lines? It'd be cheaper than trying to develop new technology and the presumably 'straight' soldiers would still be distracted by their lusty desires. Even assuming that this was a plausible or worthwhile idea, how would this play with the right-wing Republican base?"