Put out your butts: Army awards grant for anti-smoking game
by David Hinkle 
{ Jul 11th 2009 at 2:00AM }
Regardless, the Army has a really big problem with smoking, as Prokhorov says "tobacco use rates in the Army are alarming – 38 percent of service members smoke cigarettes and 15 percent use smokeless tobacco." Those are alarming rates indeed, but hey, if we had some Gunnery Sergeant screaming in our face, we'd probably turn to smoking too.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ZaxCG2 @ Jul 11th 2009 2:11AM
Unless those cigars are filled with tobacco, I'd like to suggest another picture...
If they really are, HOOK US UP.
squeehunter @ Jul 11th 2009 7:51AM
They should have put a picture of Snake up there. I don't have to say Solid around here, do I?
I don't ever plan on taking it up, but honestly, Snake kinda made me want to start.
ZaxCG2 @ Jul 11th 2009 5:50PM
I think the persistent undulation of boredom in the military would have me smoking as well. I work at a military base exchange and 90% of people just come to get some Marboro's
TRON.dll @ Jul 11th 2009 2:13AM
My Stop Smoking Coach: Alan Carr's Easyway
http://ucables.com/img/ipics/MY-STOP-SMOKING-COACH-R72556.jpg
lol@Ubisoft
Adv2k1 @ Jul 11th 2009 2:18AM
Let them smoke whatever they want, and drink whatever they want they are fighting in a fucken war .
They can't even buy quality Body Armor for them
http://www.fftt.us/ffttj/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=175&Itemid=50
but they can afford to buy propaganda games ?
Hopefully Obama will come through and end the Fucken War in Iraq by the end of next year. We need to start getting out of Afghanistan too, were going to be in that nation for 30 years. Just fly over Afghanistan and bomb it from time to time, we don't need to rebuild fucken nations. America is enough in a mess already.
How much money is being burned in the wars already ? Enough is enough already. America is more important nation to rebuild.
Johnathan @ Jul 11th 2009 2:50AM
That word is spelled with an I, and with a G.
The Dark Wayne @ Jul 11th 2009 2:55AM
also good body armor doesnt matter if you have a fucking coughing fit or an asthma attack in a firefight, that's why they need them to not smoke
ArchiGamer [thephilosophyofgames.wordpress.com] @ Jul 11th 2009 3:03AM
Hey, I have asthma... :(
The Dark Wayne @ Jul 11th 2009 3:06AM
yeah me too that's why i work at gamestop instead of iraq
Rein @ Jul 11th 2009 3:59AM
I don't think Batman with asthma is canonical and I don't think he works at Gamestop either.
You... You're just a big fat lie!
Blank-Mage @ Jul 11th 2009 4:31AM
Although, Dark Wayne, you probably have your own opinions on body armor, what with the constant attempts on your life by super-villains.
LaughingTarget @ Jul 11th 2009 8:44AM
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The only reason Obama wants Iraq done with is not out of the goodness of his heart, he wants soldiers freed up for his pet wars in Africa.
LaughingTarget @ Jul 11th 2009 9:01AM
Sorry, forgot the link.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/10/obama-africa-democracy-ghana
In any case, don't put ANY hope in the man. Obama is a classic Chicago politician. He will tell you EXACTLY what you want to hear (San Francisco - "I'll bankrupt the coal industry." West Virginia - "Coal miners are important to our nation." Pushes cap and tax). The only reason the Democratic party and Obama have been critical about the Iraq war is purely because they didn't start it. The Democratic party in America has never met a war it didn't want to wage and has never once in our history been the party of peace and non-interventionism. WW1, pushed for by a Democrat ,Woodrow Wilson, and lied about the Lusitania, a British flagged munitions ship, being an attack targeted at Americans. WW2, FDR badly wanted to fight in this war and did everything he could to goad Japan and Germany into throwing the first punch, he had to get that unemployment rate down somehow, what better way than to send people off to war. Korea, started by FDR's successor in chief, Truman, Democrat. Vietnam, Kennedy and Johnson's baby, Democrats. Carter funneled weapons to Osama Bin Ladin to back them against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and now those weapons are pointed at us. Clinton was a busy boy giving us Somalia, Kosovo and even lobbing missiles into the very nation he was opposed invading just a few short years later.
Republicans post WW2 don't exactly have a better track record with only Eisenhower and Nixon being reliably anti-war.
The basic point is don't put any hope in Obama, he is finally realizing that he isn't campaigning anymore and his true colors are showing, including the fact that he will wage war for political image just like Bush did.
Rob @ Jul 11th 2009 10:29AM
About your comment on WWII, we would have had to fight them eventually anyway. Do you think they would have left a country like ours, with the resources and industrial power, alone for very long? They were out to destory everything that stood in their way, and as the largest democratic republic in the world, one day it would have been us. So yeah FDR probably wanted them to attack us first, but mostly because majority of Americans still thought we were safe behind our oceans, which was quickly becoming a false sense of security. Do you think that the Germans, with their jet engine tech, would have thought twice about blowing up our cities if they could do it? They represented a danger to everything this nation stands for, so we would be better off fighting them then waiting for their bombers to appear over our cities.
Mr Khan @ Jul 11th 2009 11:04AM
Nixon reliably anti-war? He escalated it into Cambodia and Laos...
LaughingTarget @ Jul 11th 2009 12:36PM
Germany had no way of combating the Soviet Union, let alone maintaining continental control or mounting an offensive across the ocean. FDR just wanted a war to distract people from his failed New Deal antics. It also fails to explain why FDR was goading Japan into a war. They were never a threat (as history played out), so what was the rationale behind refusing to meet with Japanese diplomats and the embargo?
FDR wanted his name to go down in the history books as a great president and without the wars, he would have been vilified as the man who butchered the US economy and was the greatest destroyer of American rights. Few presidents are considered great by historians if they didn't send in faceless Americans to die for their own glory.
Charlie_Six @ Jul 11th 2009 1:13PM
Just ignore Laughing Target. He's one of those Ayn Rand - Libertarian freak shows.
Sly @ Jul 11th 2009 1:54PM
he does make one good point. towards the end of the war, the germans couldn't even beat the under-trained, under-equipped soviets. do you honestly think they would have been able to attack america, if they couldn't even successfully take russia? the soviets had been fighting for a long while, and the ones in stalingrad were starving. they still were able to fend off the germans. and yeah, i know they made a napoleon error, but still, if they were even able to think of attacking america, they would have been beaten back within 2 weeks.
Mr Khan @ Jul 11th 2009 2:19PM
without the pressure of an imminent threat from the West, and also with Italy still completely in the picture, they could have poured in more strength necessary to break the back of the Soviets at Stalingrad. Brute force was the only edge the Soviets had, and they wouldn't have had that without the prime threat from the west.
Noah @ Jul 22nd 2009 12:19PM
@Sly: The Russians were used to the harsh winters, had a huge country to hide in so they could seemingly retreat forever without consequence, and were smart enough to burn excess supplies when retreating. Also Hitler seriously underestimated how long Operation Barbarosaa would take. In short it was a German failure, not a Soviet victory.
Sly @ Jul 11th 2009 3:29PM
noah, I KNOW. read my sentence where i say it was a napoleonic error. it was almost an exact repeat of the german loss earlier. and it doesn't matter whether it was a soviet victory or a german loss, what matters is that in the end, germany lost to russia. that shows why germany lost. their bad tactical planning later in the war. they poured resources into the british front, and didn't win anything. they pushed into russia, and they were pushed right back.
in short, if they couldn't beat russia, no matter what the circumstances, and if they couldn't break britain, there's no way they could have successfully attacked america. the germans relied heavily on blitzkrieg in WW2, and there's no way they could have attacked america with that plan.
now, japan? that's a different story altogether...
Sly @ Jul 11th 2009 3:31PM
*exact repeat of the french loss earlier
The Dark Wayne @ Jul 11th 2009 4:57PM
Not sure if i believe that the germans couldn't have beaten the soviets. The Russians were on all but the verge of collapse, so much so that Stalin personally asked FDR and Churchill to begin the Africa campaign to take the heat of russia. Without the combined attacks on both the german's western and african fronts, I really doubt the soviets could have taken them alone. Of course this is all pointless because it didnt happen in the ways we speculate it could, it happened how it happened
doc j @ Jul 11th 2009 9:50PM
This is ridiculous, WWII would very likely not have been won without United States involvement. If Germany was allowed to hold the entirity of Europe (as it essentially did prior to the Battle of Normandy), they eventually would have taken Russia. Russia had only one real advantage in the mass of men it could afford to lose, but even that advantage could have been negated by Germany tactical and economic supremacy (which they DID have for the majority of the war).
Without the United States the British could have put next to NO pressure on Northern Africa to distract and mitigate the Italian and Spanish. Yes, Montgomery was a huge stud but his forces without American Aid would have been TROUNCED by Rommel; c'mon, he was called the Desert Fox for a reason. Without the United States there could have been no Invasion of Normandy, no Operation Overlord... the Allies would have been defeated. Could Hitler have immediately used this victory to stage an invasion of the United States? Of course not, that would have taken years to prepare, but just because there wasn't an imminent threat of invasion doesn't mean that the United States wasn't threatened. And that doesn't even begin to discuss the pressure Japan could have applied to Russia.
For full disclosure, I think "history" as we Americans are taught in public schools is basically just a class in propaganda over-emphasizing US importance in historical events. But to say that the Russians and Brits would have saved the world if left to their own devices is just bunk. Sorry I contributed to the mass of messages everyone, but I was compelled.
The Dark Wayne @ Jul 11th 2009 2:57AM
cant believe you didnt link this hinkle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Nf1MK7lts
...you twinkle toed communist son of a bitch cock sucker
The Dark Wayne @ Jul 11th 2009 2:59AM
or maybe this one to keep it game related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVyoiTl46vI
j.howlett @ Jul 11th 2009 5:15PM
good tf2 one
BlackBeltJones @ Jul 11th 2009 3:02AM
Lucky Strike makes fine tobacco.
Blank-Mage @ Jul 11th 2009 4:33AM
And Lucky Star is unrelated, but I like plugging.
Now DOWNVOTE ME, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!
343 Guilty Fart @ Jul 11th 2009 2:44PM
You must be my Lucky Star
ArchiGamer [thephilosophyofgames.wordpress.com] @ Jul 11th 2009 3:10AM
I can only imagine war being fought via Pokemon....
nintendo fanboy hater @ Jul 11th 2009 3:38AM
they would surrender because blastoise's hydro pump would flood their desert
Blank-Mage @ Jul 11th 2009 4:34AM
Wait, wait, here it is.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/7/23/the-tournemon-part-one/
Benjamin Heckendorn @ Jul 11th 2009 3:13AM
You can't get booze while serving in Iraq, so FFS give the troops something - smokes, why not?
The Dark Wayne @ Jul 11th 2009 3:17AM
because if you cant perform well in a combat situation, what good are you to the military?
t_m @ Jul 11th 2009 4:03AM
Yeah.. send them to a dangerous combat arena, and then give them cheap cancer causing products, which also reduce their combat effectiveness, night vision and fitness.
Now THAT is how you should treat soldiers!!
Sly @ Jul 11th 2009 4:30AM
well, to be fair, they DO need something to do. you could argue that all recreational activities are bad for them. "video games make you fat. books mess up your eyes. tv dulls your senses."
they need things to do to reduce stress. if you're insanely stressed, i'm pretty sure that would be bad for you in a battlefield environment. while cigarettes might not be the best solution, they do help a lot of people destress.
Blank-Mage @ Jul 11th 2009 4:37AM
"Because if you cant perform well in a combat situation, what good are you to the military?"
The words "Cannon Fodder" come to mind. Also "Zerg Rush", but I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply.
BigD145 @ Jul 11th 2009 3:30PM
Cannon fodder is always good when you're trying to take a hill that serves no functional purpose.
KFelon @ Jul 11th 2009 4:24AM
It's not the sergeants screaming in cadets faces that makes them smoke. Most soldiers in boot camp, where the screaming from sergeants actually takes place, can't get tobacco products unless they're smuggled in.
In the military alcohol is banned for soldiers at war & getting caught with it can lead to severe charges such as jail time. If your life was constantly on the line, you'd probably need something for your nerves too. The problem is many of the people who start smoking over there do it for their entire year stay and either can't quit when they get back, or don't want to quit.
Shagittarius @ Jul 11th 2009 4:34AM
What assholes, these guys are dying for you and you can't mind your own business and let em enjoy a smoke. What pricks. People need to mind their own business in this country, I think everyone has forgotten how.
If you think second hand smoke is bad just wait till you catch some second hand bullets.
Blank-Mage @ Jul 11th 2009 4:39AM
Surprisingly, I agree with you in so far as it's their decision. Not a smart one, I'd think, but hey, be my guest.
Dave @ Jul 11th 2009 6:01AM
I agree they should do what they want; but they're "dying" for me? You mean like Jesus?
Mr Khan @ Jul 11th 2009 11:06AM
Smoking is bad for your health, so why should we sit back and let our soldiers waste their own health?
Not good for the war effort.
Shagittarius @ Jul 11th 2009 12:31PM
Dave they are dying for the benefit of people who don't even believe in them.
Dave @ Jul 11th 2009 12:45PM
Well, I believe in them, Sag. I just don't believe that war has any bearing on my freedom. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. This "war" on terrorism is promoting irrational fears and serving to fuel the hysteria that makes it possible to push through legislation that LIMITS my freedom. My freedom is being threatened at home--by politicians. I'm glad someone else is trying to fight for my rights--but they're in the wrong country.
Gun Barrier @ Jul 11th 2009 1:18PM
"People need to mind their own business in this country, I think everyone has forgotten how."
Its pretty hard to ignore smoking, considering second hand smoking affects non smokers, too. Smoking in public should be banned, but that'll never happen.
U U D D L R L R B A SELECT START @ Jul 11th 2009 4:18PM
As a member of the Navy and a smoker, in my opinion as long as you can meet your physical requirements, which are tested biannually, then more power to you... just as long as you are always able to fulfill your duties. The comment asking why we should sit back and let our soldiers waste their health mildly irked me, because who is this "we"? Unless the we are a collective group of commanding officers, you have no say until you go through the educational and physical training required to become a high ranking military official. Then you have earned the right to sit back and dictate what soldiers are allowed to do.
Mr Khan @ Jul 11th 2009 4:26PM
We the taxpayers and the voting citizens of this democratic country, both of whom the military is ultimately answerable to. We elect their commander in chief and our representatives approve their budget
Thus we have somewhat of an investment in the military, one that it should be favorable to protect.
Shagittarius @ Jul 12th 2009 12:07AM
Non-smokers die everyday.