Walter Reed

President Bush inspected the much-criticized Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday and reiterated his promise to fix the bureaucratic snafus that led to shoddy living conditions and treatment delays for wounded soldiers -- problems that sparked a shake-up of top-ranking military officials.

Outside the 113-acre complex at Walter Reed Army Medical Center stood a wounded soldier ready to run — on one leg. With a blade and spring in place of his amputated limb, he sprinted up and down the veranda, unrestrained. The moment reflected much of what workers and patients at Walter Reed, the Army's flagship hospital, have come to revere about the 102-year-old facility that will shut down and move its operations to Bethesda, Md., in the coming weeks. "Here's a guy who lost a leg and is doing everything he can to get back to what he was before," said John Pierce, a physician who worked at Walter Reed for 15 years.

Mike Mansfield, U.S. ambassador to Japan, left Tripler Army Medical Center during the weekend, flew to Washington and checked into Walter Reed Army Hospital for "further tests and evaluation," government officials said Monday. State Department spokesman Ken Bailes said Mansfield, 84, a veteran lawmaker from Montana, had gone to Walter Reed for "further tests and evaluation." He refused to elaborate. Mansfield had arrived in Hawaii on Dec. 26 with his wife and daughter for outpatient tests.

A Pentagon report on the Ft. Hood massacre that left 13 people dead will pinpoint the military's administrative failings leading up to the attack, including how the accused shooter repeatedly earned favorable performance ratings in spite of mounting concerns about his views and behavior. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to announce preliminary findings in the investigation Thursday. Among other issues, investigators have examined how Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a military psychiatrist, received reviews that allowed his career to advance despite concerns about inappropriate behavior -- including charges that he proselytized to patients and discussed extremist Islamic views with colleagues, defense officials said.

The House Appropriations Committee unanimously approved a measure that barred the closure of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, an action that supporters said would reverse plans to shut the hospital in 2011. Walter Reed was selected in 2005 to be closed by the Department of Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The recommendation, which Congress approved and President Bush signed into law, calls for the Army hospital to be consolidated with the National Naval Medical Center.

Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte, who has liver cancer, is undergoing "routine" tests this week at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a hospital spokesman said today. An operation at Walter Reed last June revealed Duarte, 63, had untreatable liver cancer. However, he has been undergoing chemotherapy since then in El Salvador. The spokesman said Duarte was admitted to the hospital Monday night "and is undergoing routine diagnostic evaluation. They're just checking him over."

Walter Reed Middle School of North Hollywood and Portola Magnet of Tarzana will represent the San Fernando Valley in March at the state finals of the National Mathcounts Competition. The two schools were the big winners at Cal State Northridge in the recent regional competition, which drew participants from seven Valley middle schools. Walter Reed and Portola finished first and second, respectively, in the team category.

More than six months after disclosures of systemic problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other hospitals, the Pentagon's promised fixes are threatened by staff shortages and uncertainty about how best to improve long-term care for troops, according to a report issued Wednesday.

As she recovered in 2005 from massive wounds sustained in a helicopter crash in Iraq, L. Tammy Duckworth sometimes saw hints of the scandal that has enveloped Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the retired Army major said. "I had a cockroach in my room.... I saw mice," said Duckworth, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs, who met Monday with homeless veterans in McHenry County.

Walter Reed, one of Hollywood's premier character actors from the 1940s through the '60s who was best known for his work in movie and television westerns, has died. He was 85. Reed died of kidney failure Monday at his home in Santa Cruz, where he had moved in 1967 while phasing out his acting career and pursuing a new role as a real estate investor and broker. Beginning in 1941, he appeared in nearly 100 feature films and several hundred TV shows.

Doctors supervising Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's medical training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center frequently discussed concerns about the Muslim psychiatrist's behavior, including his aggressive proselytizing of patients, a Defense Department official said Wednesday. The problems led the doctors to question Hasan's fitness for military service, but no action was taken in the months before he was transferred from Washington to Ft. Hood, Texas, where he is suspected of opening fire last week on military and civilian personnel, killing 13 and wounding dozens.

An Army psychiatrist who was about to be deployed to Iraq allegedly armed himself with two guns and opened fire Thursday afternoon on the grounds of Ft. Hood, the country's largest military base, killing 12 people and injuring 31 others. Officials said that soldiers and civilians heroically ripped apart their clothes to make bandages for fallen colleagues, many of whom were waiting at the base's Soldier Readiness Center for medical and dental exams before deployment. The attack sent shock waves through the military establishment and raised questions about base security.

Visiting injured troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, President Bush on Monday sought some medical treatment of his own. The president has been feeling pain in his left shoulder and received an MRI scan upon his arrival in the early afternoon. After looking at the results, doctors gave the president a shot of cortisone, an anti-inflammatory medication, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

In July 2006, four young American Army officers sat at an Italian restaurant in Sackets Harbor, N.Y., about 20 miles from Ft. Drum. Three lieutenants and a captain, they were all friends, all platoon leaders in the 10th Mountain Division; one of them was my younger brother, Jeff, then 23 years old. It was their last meal together before deploying to Iraq.

The Washington Post dominated the 92nd Pulitzer Prizes for journalism Monday, winning six, including the prestigious public service award for its series exposing substandard conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Post received honors for coverage of topics including private security contractors in Iraq, a violin virtuoso's incongruous (and mostly overlooked) performance in a Washington subway station, and Vice President Dick Cheney's sub rosa exercise of executive power.

More than six months after disclosures of systemic problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other hospitals, the Pentagon's promised fixes are threatened by staff shortages and uncertainty about how best to improve long-term care for troops, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Dr. Robert Bernstein, 87, an Army physician who served as commander of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the 1970s and later became Texas Commissioner of Health, died Monday at a hospital in Austin after a battle with leukemia and other health problems, said friend and colleague Camille D. Miller, chief executive of the Texas Health Institute. Bernstein served as an Army surgeon in Japan and Korea starting in the late 1940s.

Maj. Gen. James H. Rumbaugh, commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center here, died of injuries suffered during a parachute accident in Honduras, the Pentagon said Thursday. Rumbaugh died Wednesday night while being flown to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Tex., from the U.S. military hospital at Honduras' Soto Cano Air Base outside Comayugua, said Defense Department spokesman Maj. John Smith. That base is located to the northwest of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

Dr. Robert Bernstein, 87, an Army physician who served as commander of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the 1970s and later became Texas Commissioner of Health, died Monday at a hospital in Austin after a battle with leukemia and other health problems, said friend and colleague Camille D. Miller, chief executive of the Texas Health Institute. Bernstein served as an Army surgeon in Japan and Korea starting in the late 1940s.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that he had asked the department's top military and civilian leaders to meet weekly to carry out recommendations of groups that have examined failures at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Gates said his deputy, Gordon R.