So surprise — Brian Dubie is already back from the war zone, after a draining two-week mission. That’s fourteen days, and probably as many nights. But it’s over now. No stop-loss hassles for the Lieutenant Governor, it seems.

The mission, as VDB said, was draining, and on WCAX last night Dubie described it in genuinely harrowing terms: apparently Dubie’s team was tasked with “developing opinions” about what they saw, which were then passed up the chain of command in the form of “recommendations.”

Genuinely harrowing stuff. Truly.

Please. Does anyone out there think that this “mission” was any different than the “fact-finding missions” that members of Congress run when and if it will help them prepare television commercials back home come election time?

Especially when the announcement is purposefully delayed so that it can be made in hushed tones on Primary Night?

In any event, the WCAX video of the exclusive “Coming Home” interview is one of the funnier things you’ll watch all day. Keep a sharp eye peeled for these bits:

1) The entire “interview” consists of precisely one Dubie sound bite, which the Lieutenant Governor so mangles that you feel several times that the sentence just cannot syntactically continue. But continue it does, because Dubie is clearly on a mission with this sentence, and of course 9/11/Iraq changed everything — including the fundamental laws of grammar.

2) The video opens with the tail-end of a segment on a “Winooski Armed Robber,” whose description (except for the blue bandana over his face) matches Dubie to a T.
Suddenly Dubie’s unwillingness to publish his daily schedule — even during campaign season, when publicity would seem to be a good thing — makes a whole new brand of sense.