From today’s Washington Times (no link, it’s from the actual paper, page A2), we learn:
President Obama visited wounded and local recovering troops Monday, awarding two Purple Hearts.
Mr. Obama spent about an hour in the afternoon at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
He met with 26 inpatients, as well as about 30 outpatients and their families.
The White House did not release details on those visited by the president.
Mr. Obama also spent time with the hospital’s staff.
One is of course grateful that the president visited our wounded troops. President Bush did the same, although as I recall he almost never publicized it. Secretary Gates goes often, and you will not read about it in the paper. But this story is odd, both because the lack of “details on those visited” (you’d have thought there might have been a mention of the recipients of the two Purple Hearts, for example), and also because of the numbers. He saw 56 wounded soldiers, plus their families, plus hospital staff, in “about an hour.” It doesn’t parse. He spent less than a minute per person?