Actaea

ABS Nightly News aired an interview with a former Aztoxian Army officer who has resorted to using a hook as a replacement for the hand he lost in combat after the Department of Veterans Affairs failed to cover the cost of prosthetic surgery, prompting a deluge of complaints about the way Aztox takes care of its wounded veterans.
The Debate

“You can’t ask young Aztoxians to go overseas to serve their country and then abandon them when they come home injured,” insists recently returned double-amputee Randy de Groot. “Wounded veterans like myself who have given their limbs for this nation deserve to live in handicap-accessible housing, and to have the cost of our surgeries and therapy fully covered, even if it does cost an arm and a leg. What’s the point of spending so much on expensive new tanks and planes if you’re not going to take care of those of us who have given so much already?”

“We couldn’t agree more that these brave veterans deserve a better standard of living,” hastily interjects Sarah Betelgeuse, CEO of military equipment supplier Global Strategic Solutions, Inc. “But there’s no sense cutting procurement orders to pay for it. We would consider it our patriotic duty to foot the bill for free prosthetics for anyone injured in the line of duty ourselves. And all we’d ask in return is an agreement to plaster – er, decorate – the prostheses with advertisements for our civilian sales branch.”

“That takes care of the symptoms, but not the cause,” announces Professor Konrad Mombota, Director of the AAF’s highly secretive Special Projects Division. “As long as we insist on using flesh and blood troops on the battlefield, these kinds of injuries are going to continue to cause so much inefficiency – oh, and human suffering too, I guess. I say it’s time we unleashed Operation Codename: Giant Killer Robots!”