On the Web site Counterpunch, edited by the veteran leftist journalist Alexander Cockburn, a man named Wayne Madsen announced on Saturday in a piece called "Wag the Turkey" that the whole trip was a fraud because he had figured out the president actually landed in Baghdad at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday. "Our military men and women," Madsen complained, "were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries and toast."

A blogger named Brian O'Connell responded, "Er, no. Change all those a.m.s to p.m.s and then you'd have something like a factual story." Madsen simply misread the report on the time. Baghdad is 8 hours ahead of New York. The plane took off at 7:50 p.m., which is why America found out about the trip as the last big balloon was arriving in front of Macy's just before noon.

How could Madsen have spun so demented a tale? Apparently, because of a typo in a Washington Post story on Friday. But having been caught out, he chose to continue spinning his web. In a piece yesterday called "Wagging the Media," he accused CNN of being in on the conspiracy - even though not a single CNN journalist was among the 13 brought along on Air Force One.

Then there are those who argue that Bush took the trip not because he wanted to spend time with the troops, but because he wanted - get this - to overshadow Hillary Clinton's visit to Iraq.

"Bush probably planned on visiting the troops sometime around Thanksgiving, but hastily decided to give the 'go' command when Karl Rove realized that Bush's 'daring' midnight run into Iraq would be laughed at by the entire country if Hillary Clinton already beat him to it," according to the blogger Hesiod. "It turns out that Hillary's people informed the White House of her trip to Iraq way back in September . . . Anyone still believe this was a 'spur of the moment' decision?"

Yeah, that's why Air Force One flew in the dark over the Atlantic - to rob Hillary Clinton of a one-day news story.

Why, others want to know, didn't Bush stay longer in Iraq? See more troops? See more Iraqis? Why didn't he go to Germany to visit the wounded in hospitals? Why was he wearing an army jacket?

If Bush visited a hospital in Germany, they would ask why he wasn't visiting Iraq. If he stayed longer in Iraq, they would want to know why he was using the troops as a campaign prop. If he visited lots of Iraqis in Baghdad, they'd want to know why he wasn't going to Mosul or Kirkuk.

These responses range from the peevish to the dyspeptic, from the merely cynical to the near-psychotic. Bush is increasingly fortunate to have such people as his enemies, because their demented anger continues to seep into mainstream Democratic Party discourse and threatens to make all anti-Bush rhetoric seem like the ravings of a bunch of lunatics. That happened during the Clinton years, and it's happening now.

E-mail: Podhoretz@nypost.com