It's never going to be about the men and women of who have gone to Iraq and come home with combat injuries that require lifetime care. It's going to be whether or not the really, really rich have enough tax breaks, the crony corporatism continues unabated as flag-waving corporations take from you with one hand and send their net before-tax profits offshore with the other hand. So....? So this:

"We're just preparing for something a brain-injured person should not do two days out, which is travel to Germany," the neurologist said. He smiled grimly and started toward the UH-60 Black Hawk thwump-thwumping out on the helipad, waiting to spirit out of Iraq one more of the hundreds of Americans wounded here this month.

While attention remains riveted on the rising count of Americans killed in action -- more than 100 so far in April -- doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.

More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair.

The Bush Administration's 2004 budget proposed gutting Veterans Administration (VA) services, including health care funding. Proposed cuts included: denying at least 360,000 veterans access to health care; $250 annual premiums; increased pharmacy co-payments; a 30 percent increased primary care co-payments; and increased waiting time for a first medical appointment.
...
The Bush Administration's budget proposal would have under-funded the VA by more than $2 billion. Bush's proposal would have cut the number of employees available to process disability claims, yet veterans already wait more than six months for a review of disability applications. The Bush plan for dealing with the waiting lists at VA clinics and hospitals is to reduce the number of veterans treated by the VA.
...
Last March, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget that included a $28.8 billion 10-year reduction in funding for veterans. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion and Disabled American Veterans began a letter-writing campaign to protest the reduction, so a House-Senate conference committee reduced the cut to $6.2 billion. President Bush complained that Congress needed fiscal restraint.

An army of veterans twice the size of that involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom has lost health insurance benefits since Bush took office. As many as half a million vets are homeless. Seven VA hospitals are being closed as part of an effort to "restructure" the Department of Veterans Affairs. Meanwhile, veterans of the Iraq campaign can fall in line with over 250,000 veterans who are already waiting at least six months to see a doctor.

The General Accounting Office estimates that 20 percent of Army Reserve and National Guard personnel have no health insurance at all. Although Bush did not hesitate to send Reservists and National Guardsmen to face death in Iraq, he has consistently opposed any attempt to extend full benefits to them. (emphasis added)

One of the true guiding thoughts of this whole horrible mess in Iraq was from that NeoCon guiding light and big Chickenhawk:

I think the American people are going to have great tolerance for the war taking longer, and they are going to have great tolerance for more casualties.

William Kristol
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003