Not much happening in Iraq since my last post. We are STILL grounded due to unspecified reasons, but we look to be flying on Saturday. Tomorrow is Juma, the Muslim holy day, and they don’t fly on Juma. It is also the day to start your Mujas. Mujas is hard to describe…it’s sort of like vacation time, except that they take it often. Like every other week. So basically, there are two squadrons within 15 Squadron, those who are on Mujas this week, and those who have it next week. Each squadron actually has a co-commander…they cover for each other while the other is gone…in theory, it is a good idea. Except in the best of circumstances, there is very little turnover, since one heads home for Juma, and the other comes to work AFTER Juma. So they see each other very rarely. And while continuity is a foreign concept here, it is even worse than normal in 15 Sq. Apparently, neither of the commanders like each other, so they spend much of their time countermanding orders from the previous week instead of building on them. But back to the subject of my flying. Apparently we are scheduled to fly, and on this flight, we will be hauling the outgoing members of the squadron to BIAP for their flight home. 7 folks are heading home from their 6 month or yearlong tour, and when we can, we try to say goodbye in the best way we can. So not only should I get the first of many flights (and get to go outside the wire to boot) but I get to send the people I’m replacing off to home. It’s a good deal.
But since I was on the subject of poor leadership, I do want to vent about our commander’s call yesterday. Death by powerpoint, but without a purpose. The general came up to visit the air traffic controllers we are training (we have 3 or 4 civilians and 2 military training the Iraqis on ATC procedures in our squadron). He was also going to fly on the huey helos, but since we are all grounded, that was cancelled and he had time to give us a brief on the wing in charge of all USAF folks advising in Iraq. It was one of the worst commander’s calls/briefs I have seen in a long time. He forgot the first rule of public speaking-knowing your audience. He gave a 45 minute brief on what the USAF is doing in Iraq, and never mentioned a single member of the audience or the impact we were having. His organizational chart left our squadron off. He never mentioned the advising we were doing-he mentioned the USAF cops training the Iraqi AF cops, but not the helo crews, the ammo troops, or the other 55 people in the room. He also forgot the 2nd rule of public speaking, which is to keep your powerpoint slides to a minimum. He used almost 60. 5 should be the maximum. (hence today’s title) Finally, he asked for questions, and spoke for almost 10 minutes question, but didn’t answer it. He named dropped, hemmed and hawed, twisted the question to make himself sound important, but never directly answered what the effect of the Iraqi Army reclaiming all rotary wing assets had to do with our mission here.
I guess I’ve been spoiled by good leadership prior to coming here..if nothing else, it’s another example of what NOT to do in the future.
On a positive note, I tracked down a memory card reader…so I can now transfer pictures from my camera. I will wander ‘The Village’ tomorrow and capture the essence that is Taji for all of you.
