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Bush Visits Troops Wounded in Iraq War
One of the grimmest consequences for a president who wages war is coming face-to-face with men and women he sent into battle and who returned wounded. On Friday, President Bush and first lady Laura Bush went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in northwest Washington to visit the bedsides of U.S. troops wounded during the war in Iraq. Later, they were heading to the National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md., spending a total of about three hours with hurt soldiers while battlefield successes multiplied and Saddam Hussein's regime appeared in tatters. Bush visited with 40 Army soldiers sent stateside for treatment at Walter Reed, and planned to honor a dozen with purple hearts. At the Naval Medical Center, the president was to visit 33 patients, award four Purple Hearts and stand witness as two wounded Marines become U.S. citizens.I think these are the same two Marines discussed here about a week ago. Good to see this happening, and so quickly. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the president views the afternoon "as a time to honor men and women who have been injured so that Iraqi people could have freedom." As of Thursday, the Pentagon's count of Americans wounded in action in Iraq stood at 343. Another 105 have died, the Defense Department said, while 11 are missing and seven captured. There has been no tally of the Iraqi military's dead and wounded, either from the coalition or from the Iraqi government. Iraq has said that nearly 600 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded since the war began. The visits have become emotionally wrenching rituals of Bush's presidency that visibly wear on him. "I know that every order I give can bring a cost," Bush said in a somber January address to soldiers at Ford Hood, Texas, while he was still contemplating war. Later in January, Bush went room-to-room at Walter Reed visiting five soldiers badly injured in Afghanistan, emerging with tears in his eyes. Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the president and first lady went to Washington Hospital Center to see 11 military and civilian workers critically burned in the Pentagon attack. Separately, Mrs. Bush appeared at Walter Reed on her own to see soldiers injured in the same attack. Posted by: Steve White 2003-04-11 |
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