President Bush on the Walter Reed Mea Culpa tour – Promise to make things right.
Scandals and standoffs for this March 30, 2007.
Starting with President Bush carried a promise of better treatment for neglected war veterans on a tour of Walter Reed Army Medical Center Friday, but critics questioned the timing of the visit six weeks after shoddy conditions were exposed there. Bush first toured a typical – but empty – patient room in Abrams Hall, where soldiers were transferred after they were vacated from the facility’s Building 18, where moldy walls, rodent infestation and other problems went unchecked until reported by the media. The room Bush saw featured a wide-screen television and a Macintosh computer on a desk. “I appreciate that soldiers have got a Mac” to communicate with their familles, the president said. Also during the more than three-hour visit, Bush was touring the main hospital, and awarding 10 Purple Hearts to soldiers recovering from serious wounds suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before leaving, the presIdent was speaking to about 100 medical workers to explain what his administration is doing to improve care for veterans at facilities nationwide. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, among retired military officers who took part in a conference call about Bush’s visit, praised the president for seeing wounded soldiers. But, he added: “I’m convinced he would honor them more if he would refrain from using soldiers as props in political theater.” “I would be very happy to see him do the Walter R Reed visit more like the commander and secondarily as an inspector general, rather than as a politician,” he said. Bobby Muller, president of Veterans for America, said Bush isn’t going to see 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 processed 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.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said “I would disagree with the characterization” that Bush was using Walter Reed a as merely a picture-taking opportunity. She said it took some time to clear enough room on the president’s schedule to spend over three hours with patients and staff at Walter Reed, and that Bush intends to find out from them what more needs to be done.
Meanwhile – The diplomatic deadlock over Iran’s snatching of 15 British sailors and marines showed no signs of breaking yesterday as Britain said it won’t talk to the Iranians, and Iran raised the stakes by releasing a new letter in the name of the only female captive – this one demanding British troops leave Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said talking to the type of regime that runs the Islamic republic is not the way to secure the release of the 15, but Iran responded by saying it would now delay the formerly promised release of Leading Seaman Faye Turney. The Iranians also released a new video of the capture of the Britons in Gulf waters they say were on Iran’s side of the international boundary, and suggested the captives may be put on trial unless Britain stops insisting they had been lawfully in Iraqi waters. Britain said that a UN Security Council statement yesterday expressing “grave concern” at the continued detention of 15 British sailors by Iran was what it had wanted, despite suggestions that the statement was a watered-down version of the original.
And finally, recalled pet foods contained a chemical used to make Deplastics, but government tests failed to confirm the presence of rat poison, federal officials said Friday. The Food and Drug Administration said. it found melamine – a synthetic polymer to produce plastic kitchen wares and used in Asia as a fertilizer – in samples of the Menu Foods pet food, as well as in wheat gluten used as an ingredient in the mamwet-style products. The FDA was working to rule out the possibility the contami- nated wheat gluten could have made it. into any human food, but was not aware of any risk to people.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the melamine was the culprit in the deaths of more than a dozen cats and dogs and the illnesses of hundreds more, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. In a news conference, FDA officials said the apparently melamine-contaminated thickwheat gluten also was shipped to a com- pany that manufactures dry pet food, but they would not name the company. The FDA is attempting to determine if that company used any of the wheat gluten, imported from China, to make dry pet food, Sundlof said.
And that’s just a sample of what went on, this 30th day of March in 2007, as presented by CBS Radio News.
