Quote of the Day: PowerPoints in Afghanistan

—By

| Fri Aug. 27, 2010 10:13 AM PDT

From reserve colonel Lawrence Sellin, formerly assigned as a staff officer at ISAF Joint Command in Afghanistan:

For headquarters staff, 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. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death.

It gets better. Unsurprisingly, Sellin was sacked yesterday.

Get Mother Jones by Email - Free. Like what you're reading? Get the best of MoJo three times a week.

Advertisement

 

Photo Essays + Slideshows

kids smoking

Glamorous Photos of Kids Smoking

Frieke Janssens' images of kids and (fake!) cigarettes capture the ugliness and the not-quite-bygone glamour of smoking.

Slideshow: "Enjoy an Ice Cream Cone Shortly Before Lunch"

10 classic ads from the sugar and cereal industries.

Portraits of Addiction

A Manhattan banker shoots portraits of drug abuse, sex work, and homelessness in the Bronx.

Garry Winogrand, John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1

Never Before Seen Photos From Legendary Street Photographer Garry Winogrand

Fourteen amazing scenes of life in America—and hundreds more where that came from.

See All