You can see for yourself what happens when facts are brought into these discussions.

Vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of "The Nation," about as far left as you can get without disappearing from view. I would check her facts if she declared the sun rose in the east, and this particular lie among many is less troubling than if, say, a CBS newscaster said it.

Normal liberal news sources simply throw out "20,000 wounded," an accurate figure with no further clarification, counting on the viewers and readers to supply their own mental picture of mutilated troops. None of them will report that over 12,000 of these returned to duty in three days or less. The figures don't report how many of the remainder returned to duty in a week or longer.

...of the 37,058 servicemembers medically evacuated from the U.S. Central Command area of operations as of Dec. 4, 59 percent have been for disease and 21 percent for non-battle injuries

That's 7,411 with battle-caused injuries serious enough to be flown out of the battle area. Over the entire war, two months short of four years now.

They're not interested in your numbers, Rob. In fact, from the nature of et's comments, I think I can confidently state that he didn't even read the quote.

And of course, there's the old fall-back:

"So what if we lie in our teeth about the numbers? Isn't the drastically smaller number bad enough?"