Quick Hits

• Why was General Peter Pace really pushed out as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Will Bunch at Attytood believes the administration's cover that they're a bunch of wilting flowers in the face of Congressional questioning is less than genuine:
  

  It's getting harder to believe that Pace's dismissal was about anything else other than the Cheney administration's agenda for war with Iran. It's been increasingly acknowledged that the Joint Chiefs, with Pace at the helm, had been a leader in steering Bush away from half-baked Iran attack schemes.

• Don't forget Albania:
  

  (There) was a wonderful reverse-Borat moment Sunday, with the joyous townspeople of Fushe Kruje yelling "Bushie! Bushie!" and Albania's prime minister gushing over the "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times." The crowd pressed in for autographs, photographs, a presidential peck on the cheek. Years from now, in his dotage, Bushie will feel warm all over when he recalls those magical hours in Albania. How they adored him!
  
  Outside of greater Tirana, however, the president's stock as an apostle of freedom continues to fall -- and rightly so. Even as Albania swooned, the rest of Europe was digesting a blue-ribbon report issued Friday about the abduction, secret detention and abusive interrogation of suspects in Bush's "war on terror."