Checks with Chart

DADT – We’ll work through that.

Focus on Diversity – It is what it is, we’ll work through that to.

Banning Tobacco Use in the Military – We *may* just have a mutiny on our hands if they actually try this.

Pentagon health experts are urging Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ban the use of tobacco by troops and end its sale on military property, a change that could dramatically alter a culture intertwined with smoking.
Jack Smith, head of the Pentagon’s office of clinical and program policy, says he will recommend that Gates adopt proposals by a federal study that cites rising tobacco use and higher costs for the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs as reasons for the ban.

The study by the Institute of Medicine, requested by the VA and Pentagon, calls for a phased-in ban over a period of years, perhaps up to 20. “We’ll certainly be taking that recommendation forward,” Smith says.

The best part of this report, besides the overall idiocy in it, is this little gem

Also, the report said, troops worn out by repeated deployments often rely on cigarettes as a “stress reliever.” The study found that tobacco use in the military increased after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

The clue phone must be ringing off the hook for these clowns. No kidding it’s stressful out there. You’ve already taken away porn and alcohol, now this??

If there’s one thing I’ve learned underway, it’s don’t take cigarettes away from the folks who have the guns.