To his credit, the president showed up at Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday and said the words a lot of recuperating troops and their families wanted to hear: “I apologize for what they went through, and we’re going to fix the problem.”
That’s the good news. The bad news is, Bush may not have gotten the whole story during his visit — and his handlers made the sure the media didn’t either.
Among the areas of the hospital that Bush toured were a typical – but empty – patient room in Abrams Hall that featured a wide-screen television and a Macintosh computer, and the physical-therapy unit of the main hospital. […]
Bobby Muller, president of Veterans for America, said Bush was not seeing areas of the hospital most in need of change. He cited Ward 54, where soldiers are suffering from acute mental-health conditions, and outpatient holding facilities where soldiers see long waits to get out of the Army.
“Walter Reed is not a photo-op,” Muller said. “Walter Reed is still broken. The DOD health-care system is still broken…. Our troops need their commander in chief to start working harder for them.”
Apparently, our troops recover from war injuries with the president they have, not the president they want or wish to have a later time.
But at least a group of reporters were on hand for the president’s visit, and surely they could talk to recovering troops, see Building 18, and find out the extent to which progress is being made, right?
Well, not exactly.
The WaPo reported:
Bush had visited Walter Reed 11 times before yesterday, most recently just days before Christmas, in largely unpublicized appearances, but he had never been inside Building 18. Aides described him as upset by the stories. But it took weeks to schedule a visit to demonstrate that.
The president was not taken into the shut-down Building 18 yesterday but was shown a well-kept, empty dormitory room equipped with flat-screen television and desktop computer in Abrams Hall, where some Building 18 patients have been moved. He then visited with soldiers in occupational therapy and physical therapy rooms, shaking the prosthetic right hand of one soldier and jumping onto a stair machine next to another whose right leg had been amputated. He awarded Purple Hearts and handed out presidential coins.
Journalists were allowed to take pictures and watch for only a few minutes before being ushered out, though not before Bush told photographers to take pictures of Sgt. Mark Ecker’s tattoo of a naked woman. Reporters were not allowed to interview patients in Abrams Hall, hospital officials said, citing logistics. The hospital instead made available two doctors, who spoke glowingly about the president’s visit and had no information to provide about the facility’s problems.
The president wrapped up his visit an hour earlier than scheduled. I guess he’d seen enough.