Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
Personnel were getting ridiculously fat as a result, and we were wasting too many resources on the amenity.

Our tooth-to-tail ratio in Iraq was out of whack, and it showed when you could get 31 flavors of ice cream. Troops are not being denied a decent meal and sustenance, but the rest of the stuff McCrystal is trying to weed out was just over the top in the first place.
Getting too fat? For a soldier on active service how is that possible in the first place. Today we dig out those old company photos from the 1970s to proven that grandad did once have a 32" waist.

Maybe the hardworking troops are being penalised because the staff, admin and logisitcs types who live in the operations area losing it? If you live and work in a place where you can have a row of junk food outlets then you can have a gym and you can have fitness tests and send the failures home in disgrace.

So I say again when we were extracted after a big combat operation if we able to give the troops a pizza or a burger and let him wash that down with a choice of 31 flavours of ice cream and later a few beers that would have been perfect. There were many times in the 100 degree plus dry heat of the Zambezi Valley that I dreamed of a milkshake. Odd occasion we had cold cokes delivered with a 7 day rat resupply (at least they were cold when they left base) we enjoyed that and buried the bottles afterwards. (Its the little things that mean so much you know)

Honestly I think the first step to fixing the overweight problem would have been to let a handful of fire blowing sgt majors ( sergeants-major) loose in these bases to clean them out. A sgt major in the US is still allowed to blow fire?