President Bush visited Walter Reed hospital
today, handing out Purple Hearts and speaking to medical workers about what he's doing to improve conditions at the hospital. As our own Ted McKenna
reported earlier this month, veterans groups were using the media storm that followed the
Washington Post series to push for changes they've been seeking for years. Today, they spoke out against the timing of Bush's visit.
From Bobby Muller, president of Veterans for America, as quoted in today's
Post. "Walter Reed is not a photo-op. 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."
Fair enough. So what's the government actually doing? As
reported in this week's edition of our magazine, the government, of course, has hired a PR agency to help them out in the wake of this whole mess. Trouble is, LMW Strategies doesn't exist according to any normally reliable database of information (phonebook, Google, Nexis, etc.) and the contracting officer isn't returning calls. Ah, transparency in government. This can't be part of said agency's "strategic communications" plan, can it?