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BETHESDA, Md. (AP) -- President Bush was found in good health and pronounced "fit for duty" by his doctors after his annual physical on Saturday. The checkup was delayed for four months because the 58-year-old president had a hectic travel schedule during the campaign. "They determined he is in superior health overall for a man his age," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said. The White House put out a short letter signed by the 10 doctors who participated in exam and planned to release further details late Saturday about what the team found. Buchan would not comment on any problems...

A six-story parking garage under construction at the National Institutes of Health collapsed Monday, pinning one person in the debris, authorities said. Authorities don't yet know what caused the top three floors of the structure to collapse around 9 a.m., said NIH spokesman John Burklow. Besides the person pinned in the debris, several people had been trapped, but were being freed, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesman Pete Piringer said. The extent of their injuries was not immediately clear, he said. The sprawling campus of the federal agency covers more than 300 acres on the outskirts of Washington.

Md. Country Club Joins Forces With Corps in Display of Gratitude The glittery glass chandeliers, gold linen napkins and fine china made an elegant setting. The food was traditional Thanksgiving fare: turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and pumpkin pie. But the table conversation was far from conventional. "Did some damage, huh?" Manuel A. Rodriguez asked, referring to the AK-47 ammunition that smashed Paul Powell III's right leg. "Mmm," responded Powell, 21, looking at his outstretched leg, sheathed in a metal brace to keep his shattered bones in place. "Hey, at least you have your leg, right?" Rodriguez, 20, said encouragingly,...

BETHESDA, Md. - Three days after an Iraqi grenade shattered two of his limbs and nearly ended his life, Cpl. Mark P. O'Brien found himself in intensive care in the National Naval Medical Center, with a tube down his throat and his head swollen to the size of a basketball. Looking up at his parents for the first time in months, the young Marine from East Aurora grabbed a marker and scrawled a note, using a hand that had never before been used for writing. In awkward shaky letters, it said: "I have no regrets." A week later, O'Brien, 21,...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2004 – WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2004 – It happened to Steve Cobb during his first tour in Vietnam with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade. He was wounded in combat - four times. "I got four Purple Hearts my first tour and zero my second," Cobb said. "I finally learned to duck." While learning to duck may have been an extremely valuable lesson, it can't compare to what being combat wounded taught him. That is what he draws on when he meets the wounded servicemembers who arrive at Andrews Air Force Base from Iraq or Afghanistan three times...

Steakhouse Marks Year Honoring Troops With Weekly Dinners By Samantha L. QuigleyAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2004 -- They've been gathering at Fran O'Brien's Stadium Steakhouse in the Capital Hilton here on Friday nights for a year now, but this week was different. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz presents Hal Koster, left, co-owner of Fran O'Brien's Stadium Steakhouse, with the Distinguished Public Service Award. Fran O'Brien's other co-owner, Marty O'Brien, was presented with the same award later. They were honored for hosting weekly Friday night dinners for wounded servicemembers from the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda,...

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida may attempt to attack Veterans Affairs hospitals as an alternative to more heavily guarded U.S. military installations, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warn in a new nationwide terrorism bulletin. Although U.S. authorities say there is no credible intelligence regarding a specific threat against such hospitals, the bulletin said there have been persistent reports of "suspicious activity" at medical facilities throughout the United States. That includes "possible reconnaissance activities" this year at unspecified military medical facilities in Bethesda, Md., and Aurora, Colo., the bulletin said. Even though later investigation of these two incidents uncovered no links to...

Hospital Corpsman Earns Bronze Star For Heroic EffortStory Number: NNS040610-05Release Date: 6/10/2004 4:44:00 PMFrom National Naval Medical Center Public AffairsBETHESDA, Md. (NNS) -- Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Thomas Smith was awarded the Bronze Star Medal (with Combat Distinguishing Device) in May during an awards ceremony at the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) Bethesda, Md., for his selfless act in saving the lives of his comrades. Smith put his life on the line several times to save Marines while under enemy fire. While stationed as a corpsman during combat operations in Iraq, April 4-5, 2003, Smith served with the 2nd...

Some servicemembers in the following two medical centers are not receiving visitors or mail. Please consider helping to remedy that problem. The Medical Centers have asked that you not send balloons, flowers or gifts, but highly encourage cards or letters. Please share this information with others. To Any Soldier or Airman, Ward 57, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC 20307-5001 To Any Sailor, Marine or Airman, Ward 5E, National Naval Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Ave, Bethesda MD 20889

Liberia Mission Winds Down By Jim GaramoneAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2003 - The U.S. Joint Task Force that participated in stability operations in Liberia is pulling out, Defense Department officials said. Military forces from the Economic Community of West African States have succeeded in establishing a safe area so humanitarian operations in Liberia can proceed, said officials. American forces will leave the country Oct. 1. The USS Carter Hall and USS Nashville left the area over the past weekend with 1,550 soldiers and Marines. The USS Iwo Jima still is in the area and will return...

Food bills called insult to GIs' injury:[SOUTH PINELLAS Edition] BILL ADAIR. St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Sep 11, 2003. pg. 1.A Abstract (Article Summary) After a grenade exploded inside his Humvee in Iraq, Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Murwin was treated at a military hospital in Germany and spent four weeks at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Part of his left foot was amputated. Murwin, like thousands of other military personnel hospitalized every year, is expected to reimburse the government $8.10 per day for food. That's standard procedure because of a law Congress passed in 1981. But...

WASHINGTON - After a grenade exploded inside his Humvee in Iraq, Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Murwin was treated at a military hospital in Germany and spent four weeks at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Part of his left foot was amputated. His medical care was free, but the government billed him $243 for the food. Then, just three days after he received his first bill for the hospital food in Germany, he got a stern letter saying the bill was overdue. It warned that his account would be referred to a collection agency. Murwin, like thousands of...

On April 11, at the Bethesda naval hospital, George W. and Laura Bush looked on as Master Gunnery Sgt. Guadalupe Donogean, a Mexican wounded in Iraq, was sworn in as a U.S. citizen. Some 37,000 noncitizens, most of them Hispanic, serve in the U.S. military; Congress is speeding through legislation to make it easier for them to become citizens, and two non- citizens killed in Iraq were granted citizenship posthumously. "It was a very profound moment," Bush said outside the hospital. "We were both honored to witness this." Many Democrats fear that the vision of Bush landing on the aircraft...

Actresses Hewitt, Derek Visit Injured Troops Hewitt Calls Visit 'Amazing Experience' POSTED: 10:35 a.m. EDT May 1, 2003 Jennifer Love Hewitt and Bo Derek are supporting the U.S. military by visiting injured troops in the hospital. The actresses visited they visited troops who are recovering from their Iraq war injuries at Washington, D.C.'s Bethesda Naval Medical Center and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It was not a first-time visit for Derek. She often visits injured servicemen and women in military hospitals. It was a first for Hewitt, however, who said meeting the troops "was an amazing experience." Derek, 46,...

Suicide bomb attack came as unpleasant surprise FdL Marine hopes to regain use of leg, hand A Fond du Lac native injured by shrapnel in a suicide bombing near Baghdad will spend several weeks recuperating locally with his family. Cpl. Brian Wilcox, 23, who is with the First Marine Division based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., is hoping he’ll regain the use of his right leg and hand, which were among areas sprayed with bits of shrapnel when the suicide bomber’s device exploded. Wilcox is exercising his limbs while regaining his strength with rest and steady meals. “The (Iraqi) civilians were...

CAMP LEJEUNE -- They called him the "Thriller from Manila" because he was the shortest man in Weapons Company carrying the heaviest machine gun into battle at An Nasiriyah, Iraq. That was in March. Now he carries something else: the title of American citizen. When Lance Cpl. Oj John B. Santamaria, 21, a machine gunner from Manila, Philippines, was injured in Iraq and told he would not be going back to fight the war, he decided to become an American citizen. While he was in a partially medicated haze at Bethesda naval hospital in Maryland and fighting nightmares about his...

BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL, Md. -- Is Lt. Dustin Ferrell the kind of man you'd like walking your campus? At many American universities, this is no idle question. Only three years ago, this 25-year-old Marine officer was an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, where he participated not only in the Reserve Officers Training Corps but in the debate over its presence on campus. ROTC, he says, helped prepare him for what he describes as "a calling": leading Marines. And that's exactly what this first lieutenant was doing in southern Iraq in the early days of the war when his...

WASHINGTON -- As the war in Iraq played out last week, Army Spc. Kevin Osgood lay in a hospital half a world away, nursing leg wounds from an Iraqi ambush. For Osgood, who grew up 100 miles west of Houston in Dime Box, the war ended April 1 when he took two bullets through his left calf and another in his right knee. Down the hall at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, another soldier, whose roots reach Texas and deep into U.S. military history, was recovering from a gunshot wound to the face. At nearby National Naval Medical Center, two...

American Hero: President Bush shakes hands yesterday with wounded Army Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Douglas of Fayetteville, N.C., after presenting him with Purple Heart at Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center. WASHINGTON - President Bush paid his first visit yesterday to G.I.s injured in the war with Iraq, awarding Purple Hearts to the wounded warriors and watching as two of them became U.S. citizens. "Because of troops like them, because of coalition troops, we've had an historic week," the President said after he and First Lady Laura Bush visited Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval...