Gambling with Terrorism and U.S. Military Readiness: Time to Ban Video Gambling Devices on U.S. Military Bases and Facilities?
Last updated: July 29, 2008
Author
Published by Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ACDIS Occasional Paper series
January 2007
Full text [PDF]Summary
The author examines the potential impacts on U.S. military readiness of legal organized gambling at U.S. military bases and facilities.This analysis focuses first on a salient military issue: “Is U.S. military readiness being gambled away in the Twenty-First Century’s Age of Terrorism?” In analyzing this question a second issue arises regarding the potential bias of informational sources that are closely associated with the gambling industry and its financial leverage. Accordingly, there will be a review of concerns involving some informational sources on gambling issues which have been criticized in the national press as perhaps being too closely associated with the gambling industry and its financial leverage. One conclusion of this analysis is that because the costs outweigh the minimal benefits, the entire U.S. Armed Forces should reinstate the ban on video gambling devices (VGDs) on U.S. bases and other facilities—which was the intermittent policy of the U.S. Armed Forces throughout most of the Twentieth Century.