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Forty-four colonels of the Army’s basic branches have been nominated for active-duty promotion to brigadier general by President Obama.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the nominations Aug. 27.

The officers were selected for one-star promotion by a 20-member board of senior generals that met Nov. 18-24 at the Human Resources command, Alexandria, Va.

The primary zone of consideration for the Army Competitive Category board that was chaired by Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, vice chief of staff, included all basic-branch colonels with O-6 dates of rank of Nov. 2, 2007 through Nov. 1, 2008.

Officers with earlier dates of rank were considered “above the zone,” but were provided the same selection opportunity as primary zone candidates.

A statistical analysis indicates that at the time of selection, officers were on average 48½ years old, with the youngest being 45½ and the oldest nearly 53.

Most officers are members of year group 1984, with the most junior being commissioned in 1987 and the most senior in 1980.

Thirty-three of the officers were commissioned through the Reserve Officer Training Corps, eight through the U.S. Military Academy, two through Officer Candidate School and one through the Air Force Academy.

Time in grade at colonel ranged from two years to nearly seven years, with the average selectee have slightly more than four years in grade as an O-6.

Twenty-five of the selectees, or 57 percent, are members of the Maneuver, Fires and Effects functional category.

Eleven of the selectees are members of the Force Sustainment category and eight serve in Operations Support branches and functional areas.

The nominations:

Col. Bradley A. Becker, deputy commander (support), 25th Infantry Division Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

Col. Scott D. Berrier, assistant chief of staff, J-2, U. S. Forces, Korea.

Col. Michael A. Bills, commander, Joint Task Force North, U. S. Northern Command, Fort Bliss, Texas.

Col. Gwendolyn Bingham, special assistant to the commanding general, 1st Theater Sustainment Command, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kuwait.

Col. David J. Bishop, chief of staff, Third Army/U. S. Army Central, Fort McPherson, Ga.

Col. Matthew L. Brand, deputy director of strategy, plans and policy, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, U. S. Army, Washington, D.C.

Col. James B. Burton, executive assistant, deputy secretary of defense, Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Washington, D.C.

Col. Dominic J. Caraccilo, senior commander, Fort Campbell, Ky.

Col. John W. Charlton, assistant deputy director for politico-military affairs (middle-east), J-5, The Joint Staff, Washington, D.C.

Col. Guy T. Cosentino, senior military assistant, under secretary of defense (policy), Washington, D.C.

Col. James H. Dickinson, deputy director for operations, National Military Command Center, J-3, The Joint Staff, Washington, D.C.

Col. Timothy J. Edens, deputy commander, Aviation Center of Excellence, Fort Rucker, Ala.

Col. Charles A. Flynn, director, Mission Command Center of Excellence, Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Col. George J. Franz III, chief, Joint Analysis and Control Element, J-2, International Security Assistance Force, Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan.

Col. Theodore C. Harrison, special assistant to the military deputy, Office of the Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology), Washington, D.C.

Col. Frederick A. Henry, deputy commander, U. S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

Col. Terence J. Hildner, commander, 13th Sustainment Command(Expeditionary), Fort Hood, Texas.

Col. Henry L. Huntley, director, Public and Congressional Affairs, U. S. Army Materiel Command, Fort Belvoir, Va.

Col. Paul C. Hurley Jr., deputy commander/director of operations, Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, Fort Eustis, Va.

Col. Mark S. Inch, deputy provost marshal/deputy commander, U. S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, Office of the Provost Marshal General,Washington, D.C.

Col. Ferdinand I. Irizarry, deputy commander,U. S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Col. Thomas S. James Jr., chief of staff, 3d Infantry Division (Mechanized), U. S. Division-North,Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq.

Col. Ole A. Knudson, special assistant to the military deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology), Washington, D.C.

Col. Thomas W. Kula, commander, U. S. Army Engineer Division Southwestern, Dallas.

Col. Clark W. Lemasters Jr., commandant, U. S Army Ordnance Schools, U. S. Army Sustainment Center of Excellence, Fort Lee, Va.

Col. Theodore D. Martin, commandant, U. S. Army Armor Center, Fort Knox, Ky.

Col. Brian J. McKiernan, deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7, U. S. Army Reserve Command, Fort McPherson, Ga.

Col. Robin L. Mealer, chief, Force Generation, Iraq Training and Advisory Team, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq.

Col. John B. Morrison Jr., coordinator, LandWarNet/Battle Command, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, U. S. Army, Washington, D.C.

Col. Sean P. Mulholland, deputy commander, Regional Command North, International Security Assistance Force, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Operation Enduring eedom, Afghanistan.

Col. Kevin G. O’Connell, executive officer to the commanding general, U. S. Army Materiel Command, Fort Belvoir.

Col. Barrye L. Price, deputy commander, U. S. Army Cadet Command, Fort Monroe, Va.

Col. Mark R. Quantock, chief of operations, U. S. Army Forces Cyberspace Command, Fort Belvoir.

Col. James M. Richardson, deputy commander (support), 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

Col. Darsie D. Rogers Jr., director, Joint Special Operations Command-Iraq, U. S. Forces-Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq.

Col. Martin P. Schweitzer, deputy commander (operations), 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Col. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, deputy commander (support), 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg.

Col. Richard L. Stevens, executive officer, chief of staff of the Army, Washington, D.C.

Col. Peter D. Utley, director, training, G-3/5/7, U. S. Army, Washington, D.C.

Col. Gary J. Volesky, deputy commander, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood.

Col. Kirk F. Vollmecke, director for contracting, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology), Washington, D.C.

Col. Darryl A. Williams, assistant surgeon general for warrior care and transition/commanding general, Warrior Transition Command, Falls Church, Va.

Col. Michael E. Williamson, deputy program executive officer, Integration, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

Col. Cedric T. Wins, deputy director, Program Analysis and Evaluation, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, U. S. Army, Washington, D.C.

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Consider it a new version of death by PowerPoint. The NATO command in Afghanistan has fired a staff officer who publicly criticized its interminable briefings, its over-reliance on Microsoft’s slide-show program, and what he considered its crushing bureaucracy.

Army Col. Lawrence Sellin, a 61-year old reservist from New Jersey who served in Afghanistan and Iraq prior to this deployment, got the sack Thursday from his job as a staff officer at the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Kabul. The hammer fell barely 48 hours after United Press International ran a passionate op-ed he wrote to lament that “little of substance is really done here.” He tells Danger Room, “I feel quite rather alone here at the moment.”

The colonel’s rant called into question whether ISAF’s revamped command structure, charged with coordinating the day-by-day war effort, was much more than a briefing factory. Or, as Sellin put it, “endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information.”

According to Sellin, when his commanding general (whom he doesn’t want to name) saw that Sellin described IJC as a blinkered bureaucracy, he informed the colonel that it was time to pack his things. “He was very polite and shook my hand and wished me luck,” Sellin says.

A spokesman for the command cited the specific regulation that sealed Sellin’s fate: NATO Directive (95-1); failure to clear “written or oral presentations to the media” through a designated public-affairs officer. “His comments do not reflect the reality of the work done every day at IJC,” says its director of public affairs, Colonel Hans Bush. “His insights are his own, however, his duty position and responsibilities did not offer him the situational awareness needed to validate his postings to the media.”


Effectively, that means enlisted men and officers are freer to speak their minds in front of embedded reporters than they are while serving on headquarters staff. Additionally troops are basically free to provide their opinions on a blog — as long as it doesn’t violate operational security, and as long as they don’t claim to be speaking for the Defense Department officially. Had Sellin blogged or tweeted his critique rather than published it through a wire service, maybe he’d still have his job.

Sellin says he tried to send constructive criticism up the chain before he typed out his UPI piece. 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. “My hope is that after they stop being angry at me, maybe they will take a serious look at how they operate.” The irony? His briefing was a five-slide PowerPoint.

Apparently, not everyone at IJC was as gracious as Sellin’s boss when the op-ed began to circulate. Sellin says that a two-star general — whom he declines to name — told him “I was a coward, unpatriotic, ignorant, petty and that he had no respect for me.” Sellin gauges that lieutenant colonels and lower-ranked officers support him, as do a few colonels. “In regard to most of the other colonels,” he concedes, I have marks all over me from where they have been touching me with ten-foot poles.”

Sellin is going to head home to Finland, where he’s worked for the past several years for an information-technology company that he asks me not to name. He doesn’t wish any of his now-former colleagues in IJC any ill will. But he wonders if recently-admitted problems training the Afghan security forces — the U.S.’s ultimate ticket out of the ten-year old war — is going to yield any greater sense of urgency from IJC.

“Mine is not an indictment of people or am I questioning their intentions, just some judgments that are being made and the methods that are being used,” he says. “It can be done better. We can fulfill our national security needs and get out.”

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