Dick Cheney's Not Darth Vader ... He's Harry Caul!

Perhaps, when the regime's term finally ends, we'll find Vice President Dick Cheney sitting in his secret bunker, the floorboards torn up, the walls ripped out, light fixtures disassembled, the sharp bits of broken figurines littered about.

It could be his last, futile attempt at finding those mushroom-clouding WMD's.

In hindsight, though, we've all had it wrong.

Cheney isn't Darth Vader.

He's Harry Caul, the paranoid surveillance freak from The Conversation.

From Wikipedia;

"Caul is utterly professional at work, but he finds personal contact difficult. He is exquisitely uncomfortable in dense crowds and withdrawn and taciturn in more intimate situations; he is also reticent and secretive with work colleagues."

From Filmsite.org;

"Its claustrophobic themes of the destruction of privacy, alienation, guilt, voyeurism, justified paranoia, unprincipled corporate power and personal responsibility effectively responded to growing, ominous 20th century threats of eavesdropping to personal liberties."

Certainly more than a handful of the Vice President's characteristics in there.

Unlike Harry Caul of the movies, Cheney/Harry Caul isn't hunting for electronic bugs - He is looking for Iranians!

And, gosh-darn-it, he's gonna get his Iranians ... He's going to fuss-and-fume, and stamp his feet until he gets his Iranians.

Where does this new, cinematic revisionist view of the Secret-Energy-Meeting Vice President come from?

Iraqi fighters 'grilled for evidence on Iran'; Interrogator says US military seeks evidence incriminating Tehran

The Guardian Unlimited has a report filed today, indicating military interrogators are feeling the thumbs-on-the-backs-of-their-necks kind of pressure to come up with evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq.

"US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night."

"Other military intelligence officials in Iraq refused to comment, but one said: 'The message is, "Got to find a link with Iran, got to find a link with Iran." It's sickening.'

And then there this, from IPS;

POLITICS-US: Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE

It appears that our Cheney/Harry Caul is gumming up the release of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, while he rips up the floorboards, searching out those darn Iranians.

"But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public."

In the move version, our Cheney/Harry Caul would be sitting with a tape recorder, wearing headphones, sweating, increasingly showing signs of agitation, as he plays and rewinds a piece of tape, back-and-forth, without getting his desired results.

"Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi provided a similar account, based on his own sources in the intelligence community. He told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.

"The White House wants a document that it can use as evidence for its Iran policy," says Giraldi. Despite pressures on them to change their dissenting conclusions, however, Giraldi says some analysts have refused to go along with conclusions that they believe are not supported by the evidence."

Hmmm ... Haven't we seen this movie before?

Send your refund request to the attention of Dennis Kucinich and the House Judiciary Committee.


Bonus, But Not De-Bugged, Links

David Swanson/AfterDowningStreet: The Low Down on Dick Cheney

McClatchy Newspapers: The confrontation with Iran - Experts: No evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons program

Seymour M. Hersh: Shifting Targets; The Administration’s plan for Iran.