Some of my Democratic friends seem to have lost faith in our president. They tell me that George W. Bush has lied and that the administration is sending mixed messages. Some even have the audacity to tell me that the Bush administration can’t be trusted.

I decided I had to find out how my friends could come to hold such radical views. I looked over their claims and found out how they had come to the wrong conclusion.

It’s really quite simple: My Democratic friends don’t understand “doublethink.”

Doublethink is a wonderful thing. Doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory views at the same time, while accepting both of them as true. Once you master this skill, you too can support President Bush and be accepted as a patriotic American once again.

As a favor to all of my Democratic friends I want to help you, the reader, accomplish this goal.

On June 20, Vice President Dick Cheney said we are “in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency (in Iraq).” He also said “the level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline.”

From those statements, you would tend to believe that the war in Iraq will soon end and that the insurgency has almost been defeated.

On June 26, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the insurgency “could go on for any number of years.” He predicted it could take as long as 12 years to defeat the insurgents. Rumsfeld also said he “would anticipate you’re going to see an escalation of violence.” After listening to Rumsfeld’s statements, you might think the war in Iraq is going to continue for another decade, and that military activity in the country will increase.

Some of my Democratic friends will ask me how I can trust the Bush administration. How can I believe both the vice president and the defense secretary?

They tell me that we can’t be seeing “the last throes” of insurgency if the insurgency is predicted to last another 12 years.

I tell them that I do trust and support Bush, and that I believe the statements from Cheney and Rumsfeld, all because I’ve mastered doublethink.

We are winning the war in Iraq due to the policy decisions of the Bush administration. Despite liberal propaganda, the war in Iraq will soon be over and Bush is the one to credit. The troops will begin to come home soon. But the war in Iraq will not be over for another 12 years, so we cannot set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops and must continue to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on the war effort.

You see, my friends, doublethink is easy to accomplish. All you must do to trust Bush is to accept all the messages the administration delivers, even when they are direct contradictions.

Once you do this, you will be able to make a lot more sense of much of the president’s agenda.

Again, it’s not hard: Social Security might be in trouble in 40 years, so we must reform it now. But we don’t need to work on lowering our current budget deficit, even though it’s the largest budget deficit in our nation’s history.

Understanding and accepting doublethink will not only allow you to understand the Bush administration’s position on Iraq, but its position on all public policy issues.

Marcus Afzali is a senior political science major.