Let me handcuff you to a chair and slap you around. It's for national security purposes, of course.

Dick Cheney: The White House must stop dithering.

Decoder: Obama needs to quickly make bad decisions without thinking them through and stubbornly stick to them. That’s how it’s done.

Dick Cheney: I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program.

Decoder: Americans are queasy about the word “torture,” so I’ve started referring to it as “an enhanced interrogation program.” Sounds classier.

Dick Cheney: I think the President made the right decision to send troops into Afghanistan. I thought it took him a while to get there.

Decoder: He paused to think. W. never gave me trouble like that. My incredible sense of arrogance tells me that I’m smarter than everyone else despite my unimpressive track record, so I think people should do what I want without question. Also: Bush and I never got around to focusing the military on terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we were too busy fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq, which was based on incorrect evidence about nonexistent WMDs.

Dick Cheney: But I do repeatedly see examples that there are key members in the administration, like Eric Holder, for example, the attorney general, who still insists on thinking of terror attacks against the United States as criminal acts as opposed to acts of war.

Decoder: Eric Holder has not ruled out prosecuting me, so he’s officially a meanie. I will try to paint him as an out-of-touch liberal despite the fact that he worked in the Reagan administration.

Dick Cheney: I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. We got rid of one of the worst dictators of the 20th century. We took down his government, a man who’d produced and used weapons of mass destruction.

Decoder: There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003 even though I insisted there were. So I’ll try to divert from that by mentioning that there were once weapons there. Worth a shot.

Dick Cheney: I think the–the proper way to–to deal with the Christmas Day bomber would have been to treat him as an enemy combatant. I think that was the right way to go.

Decoder: The Bush administration didn’t put shoe bomber Richard Reid into military custody, but that was nine years ago, so people probably forgot.

Dick Cheney: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques.

Decoder: I forgot to call it “enhanced interrogation techniques” the first time, but I quickly caught myself.

Dick Cheney: Twenty years ago, the military were strong advocates of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” I think things have changed significantly since then.

Decoder: Every now and again, I like to take another man to a quiet place on a ranch and give it to him in the face really hard.

Dick Cheney: The reason I’ve been outspoken is because there were some things being said, especially after we left office, about prosecuting CIA personnel that had carried out our counterterrorism policy or disbarring lawyers in the Justice Department who had helped us put those policies together.

Decoder: The reason I’ve been outspoken is because if my underlings get prosecuted, then it’s just a matter of time until they come for me. And Dick Cheney ain’t going to the Graybar Hotel.

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