Columnist Nicholas Kristof on Friday is shocked to find people in Iraq who really hate Saddam Hussein and admire George Bush for overthrowing the dictator. “The Man With No Ear” begins in Kristof’s trademark snotty fashion: “I really tried to help the White House find those missing weapons of mass destruction. I searched last week around Iraqi factories and found looters; I patrolled highways and found bandits; I visited the ziggurat at Ur, which was already built many years before Abraham was born there, but found only sweaty U.S. troops.”

But later Kristof comes clean: “Since I've been accusing the Bush administration of cooking the intelligence on Iraq, I should confess my intentions. Countless Iraqis warned me that they would turn to guerrilla warfare if U.S. troops overstay their welcome, so I thought I'd find an Iraqi who had had his tongue or ear amputated by Saddam's thugs and still raged about the U.S. That would powerfully convey what a snake pit we're in. So I began asking for people with missing tongues or ears. I got a tip about a man in Basra who had had his tongue amputated for criticizing Saddam. He had moved away, but I found a friend of his, Abdel Karim Hassan.”

What Hassan said surprised Kristof: “A thousand thanks to Bush! A thousand thanks to Bush's mother for giving birth to him!”

Kristof finds another victim of Hussein: “Mr. Abid Ali deserted the Iraqi Army, was caught, taken to a hospital and given general anesthesia -- and woke up with no right ear….I asked Mr. Abid Ali what he thought of the Americans. He thought for a moment and said: ‘I'd like to make a statue in gold of President Bush.’ So, facts got in the way of my plans for this column. But sometimes that's a good thing.” Sometimes?

Kristof then reverts to his old accusations: “Hawks need to wrestle with the reckless exaggerations of intelligence that were used to mislead the American public. Instead, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared Tuesday, ‘I don't know anybody in any government or any intelligence agency who suggested that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons.’ Let me help. Mr. Rumsfeld, meet George Tenet, director of central intelligence, who immediately before the Congressional vote on Iraq last October issued a report asserting: ‘Most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.’ Meet Vice President Dick Cheney, who said about Saddam on March 16: ‘We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.’”

Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard suggests another interpretation of Cheney’s statement, made on the NBC Sunday talk show Meet the Press: “Here, it seems likely that Cheney misspoke. He presumably meant to echo President Bush, who had said that there was evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. At least three other times in the same interview…Cheney was clear the worry about nuclear weapons was in the future. Said Cheney: ‘There's no question about who is going to prevail if there is military action. And there's no question but what is going to be cheaper and less costly to do it now than it will be to wait a year or two years or three years until he's developed even more deadly weapons, perhaps nuclear weapons.’”

From that excerpt, it’s pretty clear Kristof is misinterpreting Cheney’s position. The vice president wasn’t claiming Hussein had nuclear weapons now, only that Hussein could have them within a few years.

For the rest of Nicholas Kristof’s column on Iraq, click here.

• George Bush | Saddam Hussein | Iraq War | Nicholas Kristof | WMD

NOTE: William McGowan, author of “Coloring the News,” on the corrupting effect of the diversity quest at the Times and elsewhere, is writing a book on the Jayson Blair scandal, tentatively titled "Gray Lady Down." You can read a Q&A Times Watch held with McGowan in May in which the author discusses Jayson Blair and Howell Raines, at www.TimesWatch.org.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org