Talk about disgusting, even for Army recruiters, this is low!

"Get 'em while they're young! They'll be ours for life!"

Oy vey...

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This "laboratory" would be a great thing to blow up. Honestly, think about the animals those kids the army turns into psychopaths will torture. Or the think of the kids - their animals, too (especially after the Uncle Sam is done with 'em). If ever there were a reason for committing violent and expensive acts of vandalism, this would be it.

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...so that the first time you die, you don't get to restart?

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This is the opportune time to tell your kids to "Just Say No". If one of these killing game places opens in my town, I'll be there protesting.

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Our power elite are creating two types of individuals for our society: the servants,worker bees, those who are used for the benefit of the whole, and those who run a technocracy at the higher levels for the few who rule.

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Very seldom do I post comments to articles here but this one needs to be spoken to.

I will flat-out guarantee you there is no way this completely stupid "game" got any input during its design from actual combat veterans. There is no way actual combat veterans would think showing young people about "real" war would be a good recruiting tool.

When I walked into my first of many dozens of fire-fights in Vietnam I was astonished when one of our guys was killed. It had all been so "game-like" up to then. The training, the practice, the war stories from Marines who had gone before all made it seem unreal. It was unreal until that first fire-fight. Following that was the battle at Hue during TET in 1968, and on and on it went until, mercifully my enlistment ended in 1970 and my nearly three years of mental and physical torture was over. Since March, 1970, I have not touched a gun. Since that terrible time I cannot walk across an open area toward a tree line.

I simply cannot express my disgust with the idea that this crap is thought of as a recruiting tool. I thought the old "Army of One" was the worst attempt to sell service I had ever seen. Now that silliness has been eclipsed. These people are very simply monsters.

Keep in mind one thing. There is absolutely nothing glorious about war. If anything, it is the worst, the absolute worst endeavor humans can undertake.

Make it a game? Only if I get to use real ammo and one of the designers of the game gets to be my prey.

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Well, now, it's nice to know that the young impressionable kids that we love so much and want to protect from bad influences so much that we have movie ratings to keep them from seeing certain movies, will have a fun place to go to become impressed with the ever popular war murder and mayhem. We do love our kids, don't we?

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The ailing economy may end up being a more effective recruiting tool for the U.S. military than all the previous gimmicks they've used, such as giving high school kids rides in tricked-out Hummers and developing custom video games. I can envision a lot of desperate folks who are out of options, especially younger ones, enlisting just to get three square meals a day and a roof over their heads.

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The saddest part of all is the American taxpayer paid for this!

Young men and women should not be targeted (a word I use on purpose) by military recruiters until they're at least sixteen years of age. And below the age of eighteen, parents must be involved.

Our kids are exposed to enough violent video games. We don't need our Army creating a virtual killing center.

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Primates?????

Take your racist rant somewhere else.

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I'm proud of my brave friends (they hauled my wife's TV from Indiana) who have gone to Kenyan villages, in the company of local Kenyans, and who then talked to Hutu and Tutsi alike, and so have saved African lives. At least once, local forces had a force prepared to kill the peacemakers, but didn't.

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Thanks, Jim Hightower, for publicizing this. Desensitizing kids, as early as the age of 13, to the brutal reality of war by linking it to video games is despicable. I live near NE Philly, and I don't want the youth of my community poisoned by this "experience". I hope to interest local folks to join in a protest there. Maybe we can prevent a rollout of more "Army Experiences" across the country, and close this one down, too!

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If a guy enlists and he has a girlfriend and is even married, at least half of them somehow get turned on and think it's sexy. To make matters worse, if later on he backtracks even a bit because he finds out a disturbing trend or incident and even wants to quit, she won't have it and will think he's not a man and may even go out of her way to separate from him.
I'm not saying all women do that to their male partners who enlist and I've met couples where one of them enlists due to economic reasons. However, all this enlisting does is cause more family anxieties in the long run and even breakups which didn't have to happen. Also, did any of you notice the rise in military divorces that recently made news?

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When the fuck is Alternet going to ban Honky?

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At first a soldier thinks combat is a skill. Then he learns it is an inevitable death sentence. It is all about boredom and luck.

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If we stopped selling weapons to other countries and only gave food and medical aid and left the "World Police" functions to the UN, then I think we would not need to have such a huge military because we would not be cultivating enemies at every conflict.

I am quite sure there are several million Iraqis that wish we had never decided to "save" them.

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I agree with you.

dboy

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I'm ex navy(Nam).
War movies don't "hurt" and we don't die.
Seems as if this is a war movie and, after the kids get sucked in and see reality, they may be one of us.
Then again, they may just be dead.

This "arcade" sounds like a black hole of bullshit.
It really does seem that those who the military targets are those who are quite a bit unlike us.
Yes, there always are street thugs in the service however, I don't think they were THE target of recruiters as they are today.
They seem to be getting extremely desperate.

It seems like FUBAR lives, especially in this killing fields arcade.
Shut it down and treat the prospects with hinesty and respect.
They'll make better grunts.

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"Please Remember your pacifist sentiments.
Posted by: Honky the Nihilist on Dec 6, 2008 6:22 AM

I am sick and tired of progressives talking about how “we” need to go into some African shit hole to keep those primates from murdering each other. When they say “we”, they are never talking about themselves or their children. If it is Clooney approved, half of alternet is ready and willing to send the poor kids, who could not afford to go to college, off to kill, get maimed, or come home in a box."

Fascinating that your comment received a 5! If I were to say, I am sick and tired of conservatives {overwhelmingly white males} talking about how "we" {speaking to ALL Americans white males or not!}, need to go into some JEWISH shit hole to help them {the "Children" of GOD}, kill off some more Sand Niggers, you would be offended and this post would be DELETED, REPORTED and me possibly BANNED.

Yet black people here are supposed to be as silent as cockroaches when comments like yours are made here which are quite frequent.

Arabic people are people of color and while it seems NO black people here are willing to speak out against the HATRED being thrown at them and other people who do not LOOK white, I most assuredly will!

This nation was founded by "primates!" They murdered MILLIONS of Native Americans, and were responsible for the MURDERS of over 50 MILLION Africans packed like RATS in the slaves ships whom did not survive the voyage to the "New" World.

However they don't count because they were not European Jews.

They do not have endless documentaries produced about them.

They do not have endless movies produced about them.

They do not have endless articles produced about them.

They do not have endless research done in regards to their deaths because they were "primates."

Primates {those NEO-CONS whom are overwhelmingly JEWISH} started this "War" on "Terror" that has caused the deaths of MILLIONS of people of color that have been referred to as "towel heads, rag heads, sand niggers," and the like. The soliders were taught by the Israelis that the only thing an "Arab" understands is "force!"

That is the SAME thing the White Slave Master said about the African slave!

Black people and other people of color are sick of "Conservative talk radio," were sick of ISRAEL and were are sick of all of their "lobbyists" and NGO infrastructures that exist here in the so-called, "United" States of America!

Terrific: An Educated Black Male

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I take issue with the notion that the "Game", with a few added features, is to be viewed as necessarily perverse or evil.

Let the Military have its "Game" but let the government mandate that all participants be wired in such a way that they physically receive the stench of war (rotting and burned flesh, hear the screams of the dying and orphaned and feel the pain from shrapnel, bullets and white phosphorus ordinance of those they are targeting.

Let it further be mandated that all children be accompanied by a parent or guardian wired in the same way.

All children under 21 must enter into the "Game" in defined groups and at the end of the game all accompanying parents/guardians must agree to choose one child in their group to sacrifice a limb of his or her choice.

That would put some reality in the experience rather than just the myths of battle.

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Thanks Jim Hightower for keeping us posted.
This gives me an idea of how we can "fight" back. We could open our own places of entertainment and show our youth just exactly how war really works.I'll bet people could come up with a lot of ideas on this as has already been posted.Could we get a grant? If it were entertaining enough it would keep the kids off the streets.Our tax dollars would be well spent and educational too.

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Like a rambunctious child, allowed to run wild with no supervision or restraints, and who grows up to be an incourrigible lout, the Pentagon is a major thorn in the side of our people, and a real danger to the US and the world. The force behind the Pentagon is, of course, those same fine people profiting so handsomely from the misery in Iraq and Afghanistan-corporate fat cats and their lackies in our "government". More of the same will surely lead to ruin. We need to remove our military personnel from ALL foreign nations and pare down the size of our forces to that actually necessary for our DEFENSE, not a force for terrorizing the world. Doing this would require putting a lot of people into prison. We may just have to release a few hundred thousand hapless twits whose only crime was that of possessing "illegal" drugs, to make room for the REAL crooks. Wouldn't that be awful?

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...field artillery, to be precise. If they really want to attract the kids, they should take them to the Field Artillery School at Ft. Sill and let them blow up stuff with real cannons! Now that was cool, a lot cooler than what came afterward - being stuck in rundown WWII German army barracks in a small German town, doing maintenance on old equipment, taking irrelevant classes, filling out endless and ambiguous paperwork, and trying to look like I was busy so someone wouldn't grab me and give me an extra job to do.

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That's it, "Damn." Well that's not all of it. What will become of us? That's all of it.

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And along with them will come acres and acres of vacant mall and commercial space.

Let's get rid of this little phenomenon before it gets rid of us.

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a chocolate chip cookie!

Around 1960 two boys got a free ice cream cone just for filling out a coupon. They put their imaginary friend's name on the coupon. Ten years later the imaginary friend got a draft registration notice.

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In the late 1970's and early '80's, when video and arcade games were rapidly growing in both popularity and sophistication, the public was getting the first glimpses of advanced military weapons which had user interfaces that definitely resembled some of these video games. The thought did cross our minds that the games we were playing might include military spying devices to identify potential recruits who have an aptitude for controlling the new kinds of weapons.

With this overt military arcade, I wonder if enlistment bonuses will be offered to high scorers.

buzzsaw

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Glorifyin' and sanitizing this isn't anything new. The only difference, which is big, is that it's done electronically, with all the psychological savvy on the militarys part to NOT tell the kids what it's REALLY like.

Prior to this the description of what the "reality" of military life was/is was done with still pix, some videos as well as TONS of TV ads, which still run today. This is an active attempt to BS the youngins'.

It's SSDD on the militarys part, just more high tech.

What Eisenhower said when he left office (I believe), that don't let the military Industrial complex get out of hand and take over things. Unfortunatley they have.

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Everyone is up in arms about this but say nothing when their kids are "playing" the same simulations in their very own living room. Has any one even really looked at some of the "games" available today? Murdering innocents for points, taking drugs, visiting hookers. If you are a pacifist and against the military then fine, just say it. But don't pretend to be concerned about the effect these simulations will have on teens when they've been simulating much worse since they were old enough to hold a joy stick.

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send the kids out to inform the widows.

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The country needs soldiers.

Unless you believe in involuntary servitude ( aka the draft ), who cares how they recruit?

West Point doesn't seem to have a hard time getting applicants.But not everyone has the intelligence to be an officer............so we recruit from the masses. And many youths just want to be warriors. Seems to be that way since the beginning of time.

And uneducated recruits can learn useful trades..........not all are destined to be fighters. The support staff is just as important.

When The Messiah changes Global Politics after Jan 20, we won't need as many soldiers, that's when we're leaving Iraq. Right??

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While the corporate world has been rapping us, Europe has been feverishly passing laws to protect its people from poisonous food, cosmetics, giving them all kinds of protections and safety nets and still prospering. They have also given their youth affordable college educations and superior education in general. I am outraged at the cost of college here. At a time when China is building a new affordable college a day for its youth and India is doing the same, the cost of our colleges are off the charts. College educated people are our only way to compete with the world. They are our future! This idea that kids should go into debt to the tune of thousands of dollars while we bail out companies is obscene and I plan to do something about it. Students need to learn that higher education is a right that should their government should support and they should not be put on the economic back burner. We are funding the biggest prison system on the face of the. We seem to be able to find away to put more people behind bars then any other nation and fund 761 bases with a trillion dollar military price tag while our students are struggling to go to college! Other nations aren't doing this. They understand why it’s vital to have an educated youth to compete economically in the global market. I plan to go to college age students and suggest that they strongly lobby for their futures and the future of this nation. No more student loans. We want affordable colleges and our young people should demand it! Today the Greek people were outraged at the murder of one young person by a police man. There were riots in the streets and the Prime Minister is going to write a personal apology to the boy’s family, someone is going to resign. Yet here this happens every day. Some young person gets shot and no one cares because the general tenor of our nation does not value its population. Europe is showing us that it is possible to raise the bar in every way and we need to work to create this world for our people here to. This is a true Democracy when the government protects the people and understands how important it is for a nation to respect its people and offer its youth a future that is vital for all of us.

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Army recruiters have been using videogames to lure potential recruits for years now. In fact, so have the marines. The only differance now is they're using thier own custom made games instead of Halo and Call of Duty IV

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How do you spell M.I.C.?

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