Heller satirically raises other questions of values through his exaggerated, comic depiction of Milo's management of his syndicate. Milo now has planes arriving from such markets as Liberia, Cairo, and Karachi. He deals with everyone except Russia — because it is Communist; but he has no problem doing business with the Nazis. The syndicate even profits from specific battles. Milo contracts with the Allies to bomb a highway bridge at Orvieto but agrees with the Germans to defend the same bridge with antiaircraft flak. From each, he receives the total cost of the operation plus six percent. He also gets a "merit bonus" of $1,000 from the Germans for each plane shot down. Having finalized the arrangements, Milo then easily convinces each side to use its own men and equipment. He makes a tidy profit for signing his name twice. This is the raid in which Mudd, the "dead man" in Yossarian's tent, is killed.
Milo's cash flow is strapped due to his purchase of the entire Egyptian cotton crop so he contracts with the Germans to bomb his own squadron's base on Pianosa. Heller details the bombing and strafing during which Milo's pilots spare the landing strip and mess hall so they can land and enjoy a hot meal before retiring. As Milo likes to say, "What's so terrible about that?" A contract is a contract. This time, however, it seems that he has gone too far. American newspapers and congressmen denounce the action until Milo opens his books and shows what a wonderful profit he made. Then all is forgiven. He suggests that governments get out of the war business altogether and leave it to private enterprise.
Milo tries to solve the problem of cotton glut by making chocolate-covered cotton balls, a few of which he offers to a nude Yossarian (he wears sandals) who is up a tree watching Snowden's graveside funeral service. Yossarian points out that the cotton balls are indigestible but suggests selling the cotton to the American government, bribing officials to facilitate the deal. Milo at first resists but then paraphrases Calvin Coolidge's 1925 speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, in which the U.S. President said: "The chief business of the American people is business." Milo is ready to do business. When government intervention pads his pocket, he is all for it.
