The Washington Post reports about the effects of video games on the performance of American soldiers. Readers are immediately introduced to a a combat engineer's impressions of his first live shooting: "It felt like I was in a big video game. It didn't even faze me, shooting back. It was just natural instinct. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!" The combatant told the Post that the experience was like the video game Halo, and that "It didn't even seem real, but it was real."

The article goes in-depth to discuss a number of former and current games and simulators that are used to boost soldiering skills. A former chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab said that soldiers of the video game generation are the new Spartans: "Remember the days of the old Sparta, when everything they did was towards war? In many ways, the soldiers of this video game generation have replicated that, and that's something to think about." It sure is.

If video games can improve physical and mental skills, as some studies have claimed; if video game marketing is as effective as advertising networks claim... video games appear to be the perfect medium for breeding indoctrinated soldiers superior to their predecessors. And by this logic, aren't video games the perfect medium for breeding violence in general? Controversial lawyer Jack Thompson calls video games murder simulators--how far off the mark is he, really?