52,375 veterans treated or evaluated for PTSD after Iraq or Afghanistan

That's only half to a third of those who will end up on disability for exposure to DU weapons. Many will be on for both.

But it will be worth it to have those military bases, and the war profiteering, and control of all that oil. Everybody's getting rich and the only casualities are all disposables anyway. Besides, the US taxpayer is footing all the bills, so costs are low and profits are high.

It's Can't Lose. So what's the problem?

There's no medal for dying to increase the profits of certain corporations, but they really do appreciate it, even if they can't really say so.

Is to maximize shareholder value.

This does not, of course, say anything about "customers", or "products", or "services", because these have nothing to do with the purpose of a corporation. If a corporation could make money by having no "customers", "products", or "services" at all, they would do so, because these represent "costs" to be minimized, "costs" can be minimized completely by doing away with "customers", "products", and "services" altogether. Very few businesses are actually able to operate that way, but nearly all try.

The purpose of the Medical Industry is to maximize the profits of the Medical Industry. It has nothing to do with providing actual "medical care", except as an pretext to obtain revenues, because The Goal of the Medical Industry, like other businesses, is to maximize shareholder value. They have a variety of approaches for doing so:

- Have taxpayers pay for your R&D, but make sure you own the rights to it.

- Have the government take away citizen rights to due process by prohibiting citizens from suing for having been poisoned by a drug company or murdered by an incompetent doctor.

- Complain about the "nursing shortage" resulting from overworking and underpaying nurses to create an argument for importing Cheap, Docile Medical Labor, which is always endlessly endearing to the Cheap-Labor Conservative.

- In general, fight like hell against any regulation and any reform which would increase costs or decrease revenues.

- Double-bill and triple-bill, and remember always the First Rule of Acquisition: Once you have their money, never give it back, so make administrative systems so complex that the money never gets refunded.

And so forth.

We do have 'socialized medicine' in the US because Republicans in Congress voted to give it to themselves. It would be a bad thing to provide it to the rest of us, because that might lead to Regulations and Reforms which would increase costs and reduce revenues for the Medical Industry. Therefore corporatist legislators who benefit from socialized medicine rail against "socialized medicine".

The Medical Industry has paid out hundreds of millions to buy up legislators who will weasel the laws to the profit of the Medical Industry and at the expense of everybody else - honest ones who stay bought.

And now you know why "medical care" in the US is so expensive, and why we get so little for it. It's a great racket.

Medical Industry: "Pay up or die."

You're attempting to project crimes committed by neocons onto their critics, detractors, and accusers. Common right-wing schtick.

We've seen a lot of this. A right-winger ranting for exactly the opposite of what the evidence says is true. And making your "point" by intentionally misrepresenting the evidence:

- Bush hasn't committed impeachable crimes. Clinton did.

- Bushites didn't lie their way into a war of conquest. The Democrats did that. Democrats demanded that Bush invade Iraq and based their demands on lies.

- Republicans didn't give away the store to corporations. Democrats did it.

- Republicans don't commit sex crimes. Democrats do.

- Republicans say they are "pro-values", so Democrats are therefore "anti-values" and are "bad" simply because they're not "pro-values" Republicans.

- Gonzales didn't lie. Shumer did. Greenwald did.

- Everything a right-winger has ever done wrong was actually done by _____________ (fill in the blank with the name of a Democrat).

You're like the guy who complains to the judge, "I didn't rob that store! The detective who arrested me did it!" It's cute kind of at first, but it gets old fast. Besides, you're lying.

Now that you've been exposed, you'll be wanting to stop lying this way. Pick another way.