Posted on 09/01/2010 3:51:30 PM PDT by billorites
In Afghanistan, loose lips sink careers, it seems: First, commanding general Stanley McChrystal got the boot for speaking too freely about his Commander in Chief. And now NATO has fired a colonel serving as a staff officer in Afghanistan for daring to criticize the most important tool we have in the fight against insurgents: PowerPoint.
Wired's Spencer Ackerman reports that Col. Lawrence Sellin, a 61-year-old Army reservist, has been dismissed from his post in headquarters with NATO's International Security Assistance Force less than 48 hours after he published an op-ed, via UPI, complaining that the "war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information." Sellin clearly anticipated that his tirade, which NATO says he didn't clear for publication in advance, would serve as a resignation letter. It opened with, "Throughout my career I have been known to walk that fine line between good taste and unemployment. I see no reason to change that now. Consider the following therapeutic." He went on to excoriate the meaningless, self-serving, metastasizing military bureaucracy that holds sway in Afghanistan and justifies its existence via PowerPoint slide: "Little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well."
Sellin was fired for failing to get permission to publish the op-ed in advance. But he told Ackerman that he'd tried, and failed, to get someone in the chain of command to listen to his concerns about the bureaucracy. "Sellin says he tried to send a critique up the chain before he typed out his UPI piece," Ackerman wrote. "He gave his superiors a briefing on 'proven organizational methodologies' to streamline IJC, but it went nowhere. 'It was only my rant that everyone read,' he says...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Death by PowerPoint is government-wide, not just in Afghanistan.
I heard the rant on the radio the other day. He would make a good freeper.
“Next slide, please!”
He went out with a bang - on his feet, not on his knees. Big props to Col. Sellin. I’ll take a warrior who speaks the truth over a resume polisher any day.
Well, I think better of him because he wasn’t stupid. He knew full well what his opinion (and the way he worded it) meant for him.
I give him credit for trying to make a point.
It's a crazy bandwidth hog and jr. officers feel obliged to present every silly report with full graphics.
Many years ago some wit parodied the "Rifleman's Creed" as follows...
This is my PowerPoint. There are many like it but mine is 4.0.
My PowerPoint is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life.
My PowerPoint without me is useless. Without my PowerPoint, I am useless.
I must format my slides true. I must brief them better than the other staff section who are trying to out-brief me.
I must brief the impact on the Commander before he asks me. I will.
My PowerPoint and myself know that what counts in this war is not the number of slides, the colors of the highlights, nor the format of the bullets. We know that it is the new information that counts. We will brief only new information.
My PowerPoint is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its fonts, its accessories, its formats, and its colors.
I will keep my PowerPoint slides current and ready to brief. We will become part of each other. We will…
Before God I swear this creed. My PowerPoint and myself are defenders of my country. We are the masters of our subject. We are the saviors of my career.
So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace (and the next exercise)!
Author Unknown
What the hell and why not? At age 61, he wasn’t going to make one-star anyway....
Somehow I don’t think that he was fired for criticizing a Microsoft product. He was fired for publically criticizing the military organization that he worked for. That will usually get you fired no matter who you work for.
Exactly.
how many jihadis died from being powerpointed ?
Yeah but “Colonel resigns after mouthing off in public” doesn’t make for a very interesting headline.
A 61 Yr Old Colonel?
He wasn’t going to get a star anyway, so what the hell, eh?
A sentence demonstrating that Sellin is an idiot.
I like it!
People compete around here to see who can produce the snazziest power point...complete with music and slides that move.
I prefer the cold honesty of Excel.
I am “aware”, shall we say, of a very nice Powerpoint presentation - an after action report of the ambush where my son and three others were killed and several wounded in Iraq. Arrows pointing to the bad guy positions and the mosque, aerial photos, the works.
- General James N. Mattis, USMC
He was just confirmed as head of Central Command.
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