Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Democrats, “leftists,” and the media of hoping for more American fatalities in the war in Iraq. On the December 9 Rush Limbaugh Show, he declared: “They want deaths! ... It's gotten to the point now where the more deaths in Iraq the better for them, they think. The more lives saved in Iraq, the bigger the problem for them.”

Limbaugh was responding to a December 9 Washington Post article by staff writer Ceci Connolly, which summarized a New England Journal of Medicine report crediting technological advances for lowered battlefield death rates. Connolly noted that the U.S. military has achieved “the lowest casualty fatality rate ever,” and paraphrased a conclusion of Boston surgeon Atul Gawande's study: "[T]he remarkable lifesaving rate has come at the enormous cost of creating a generation of severely wounded young veterans and a severe shortage of military surgeons." Limbaugh also took issue with a December 8 Reuters News Service article reporting the study's findings.

From the December 9 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: There is an enormous cost to saving lives. We may have to rethink this, ladies and gentlemen, because there is an enormous cost here to saving lives. We're “creating a generation of severely wounded young veterans, and a severe shortage of military surgeons” because they're all on the front lines saving lives. That's not good? What in the world are we talking about? Should we let them die?

[...]

The answer to this is they're just livid -- the press, the leftists in this country are just upset that there are not enough deaths to get people outraged and protesting in the streets against the war. They're mad that these doctors are saving lives. They want deaths! They've been counting deaths up to 1,000, they hoped that would get Bush out of office. They still want Bush out of office; make no mistake about it. They still want Bush discredited and it's all part of coming back in '06 and '08, and so there are too many lives being saved over there. These lives in old wars, they would have died.

These soldiers in old wars would have died, like Vietnam, and we would have had people protesting in the streets but now these surgeons are saving too many lives. There aren't enough deaths so people aren't gonna be mad! It makes total sense to me. In fact, it's sort of like the left complaining when you tell them crime is down.

[...]

Remember one of the things I warned you about the Democrats? Bad news for America is good news for them; good news for America, bad news for them. They've doubled their bets. It's gotten to the point now where the more deaths in Iraq the better for them, they think. The more lives saved in Iraq, the bigger the problem for them.

As Media Matters for America has noted, Limbaugh has previously accused Democrats of hating the military and “breathlessly awaiting” the 1,000 U.S. death in Iraq.