Unfortunately, he was blown up.
Army Capt. Travis. Patriquin, 32, St. Charles, Mo., died last week when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle in the insurgent-dominated city of Ramadi in al Anbar province. Before he was killed Capt. Patriquin wrote a Powerpoint briefing that used stick figures to explain how the U.S. could tame al Anbar. (See the briefing in PDF format.)
The briefing, which is funny, smart and a bit sarcastic, rocketed around the military. It suggested that U.S. troops only dimly understood the competing and ancient power structures in al Anbar province. The only way to stabilize the deeply tribal region was to build security forces made up of Iraqis from the area who could police themselves, he reasoned.
In one of the last slides, the American stick figured, who goes by “Joe,” realizes that “if he’d done this three years ago maybe his wife would me happier and he’d have been home more.” Unfortunately, Capt. Patriquin didn’t make it home. – Greg Jaffe
PowerPoint is an evil tool utilized by incompetents to make the entirely unreasonable, reasonable. It is the bane of academics who attempt to use graphics to represent data accurately.
What is missed in the post from the WSJ is that Patriquin was a friggen genius who not only points out the problem of the entire Iraq war with stick figures, but turns the military’s reliance on upon PowerPoint into part of the joke. For more on the how PowerPoint led us to war and incompetence see here and here.
There are a lot of big picture draw ins I could make, but the basic issue is that this man died in vain while having some of the most hysterical and on target criticisms of the way this war has been mishandled.
Of course, Bush might get hung up on the reference to Sheik’s being around for 14,000 years (an exaggeration, but not by much) because, you know the Earth may only be 6,000 years old.
If I had to pick I wish he was more alive even if it meant he was less “a friggen genius who not only points out the problem of the entire Iraq war with stick figures, but turns the military’s reliance on upon PowerPoint into part of the joke.”
It’s “bane”, not “bain”.
Sad story, by the way. I just saw that Powerpoint briefing myself.
I meant conrad…just kidding and thanks.
Nice one! I nearly sprayed my screen with coffee upon the mention of Mr. Drummond.
Sorry for being pedantic. I get a little twitchy seeing typos and misspellings. Reading Matt Yglesias makes my head explode.
It’s actually quite helpful–the cool thing about WordPress is that it actually has spell check so while the grammar errors remain, the spelling errors have been reduced–it actually caught bain, I just didn’t notice.
It’s damn good, the powerpoint. And its so simple that I think Dear Leader could follow. Can somebody get this sent to the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington D.C. stat?
What is sometimes missed even by the Left became painfully obvious to me in 1972. From a near medal of honor winner, had to make do with two silver stars, bronze star, and DFC and three purples, came an imperative “just don’t go there, no matter what you do, don’t go there.” This man appeared to be of the MOST gung-ho type, yet had synthesized 2 1/2 tours fairly simply. Some of those who most loathe the warring are those who have to fight it. My older stepbrother. cdk