Did Rush Limbaugh Actually Praise Obama on the OBL Mission?

When Rush Limbaugh opened his show today, he seemed to be heaping praise on President Obama for authorizing the mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden: "Ladies and gentlemen, we need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama."

Limbaugh went on to say:

President Obama has continued the Bush policies of keeping a military presence in the Middle East. He did not scrub the mission to get Bin Laden. In fact, it may be that President Obama single-handedly came up with the technique in order to pull this off. You see, the military wanted to go in there and bomb as they always do. They wanted to drop missiles and drop bombs and a number of totally destructive techniques here. But President Obama, perhaps the only qualified member in the room to deal with this, insisted on the Special Forces. No one else thought of that. President Obama. Not a single intelligence adviser, not a single national security adviser, not a single military adviser came up with the idea of using SEAL Team 6 or any Special Forces.

Though the tone of his remarks were sarcastic, various media outlets--from Time and Mediaite, to the Huffington Post and National Journal--all took his words at face value: as actual praise for Obama.

Gawker summed it up:

...listen to the clip up, as he sarcastically stresses the parts about Obama being the only person in the room ever to think of this mission and he should get all the credit. He's just pullin' your leg, people. He hates Barack Obama!

Listen to Limbaugh later in his program: