UPDATE: Frank Rich, NY Times, says casualty numbers manipulated during Chris Matthews "Hardball" show.

Frank Rich, NY Times reporter, was on Chris Matthews last night. He is sharp and willing to write the truth, as he has done many times. What pleased me yesterday about MSNBC's Hardball was that for the first time Rich said that the Administration is playing with the numbers for both U.S. and Iraqi casualties and they have been for some time.

This issue for me has been the subject of several of my posts in the past 4 months. It was encouraging to hear the same from Frank Rich's mouth. Now, if we can get them to print an article on the topic, we might raise more awareness as to the lengths this Administration is willing to go to twist the facts and lie about conditions in this war of choice in Iraq. When the transcript for Hardball comes out tonight I will update this post with his actual comments. Stay tuned.

UPDATE Sept.6th.

As promised above, here is the text from yesterday's Chris Matthews Hardball show where Frank Rich is answering a question from Chris.

RICH: Well, I agree with you (Chris). Part of it is there‘s not enough fact checking by the press. There‘s so many erroneous statements being thrown out there, including right now about what‘s going on with casualties in Iraq, both American and civilian. Very little of it is fact checked. It becomes a cloud of sort of disinformation, and that‘s been true since the hyping of the WMDs before we went in.