Most entertainers visit Iraq to send the message to our men and women in uniform that Americans are united in their support for them. Not Rush. Rush Limbaugh has been making clear on his show that, on his trip to Afghanistan, he lied in order to mislead our troops into thinking that many Americans don’t support them.

Basically, Limbaugh framed a story about how medical advances were saving the lives of wounded soldiers more often than had been possible in previous wars, and in a despicable fashion, framed it as news that people are upset because they are actually hoping for more battlefield fatalities.

Mentioned this in Kandahar; you could have heard a pin drop. They did not know this story. I repeated the story to them about this Reuters dispatch that we got that found problems with the news that battlefield fatalities were down and lower per capita than ever before in the history of American warfare. Battlefield fatalities are down. And, I said, “Folks, this news was presented as a problem. We couldn’t figure why in the world is the fact that battlefield fatalities are at an all-time low a problem. Why are some people upset? And, we finally figured out that they are actually hoping for more battlefield fatalities because that will help them gin up anti-war support from their mirroring number of supporters in this country.”

I said, “That is going on back home."

If you read the article, it's clear this is another slimy Limbaugh tactic to distort the truth and launch ad hominem assaults on those in the anti-war camp.

The Reuters story in question, “U.S. Medical Advances May Mask Wars’ Human Cost,” cited a study by Harvard’s Atul Gawande and pointed out that medical advances were saving the lives of wounded soldiers more often than had been possible in previous wars--clearly a good thing. However, the article noted, this meant that simply looking at the number of deaths would give a deceptive impression about the scope of the war.