Afghanistan: 82 Airborne CO PowerPoint with "Slavery Reinstated" and "Slap a bitch"

PowerPoint slides spur ouster of CO, CSM
By Joe Gould - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday May 22, 2011 8:45:39 EDT
On Nov. 7, 2009, in Afghanistan, a PowerPoint slide appeared in the daily battle update briefing of a battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division. The slide was meant as a joke, but it set off a firestorm.

The slide, among those emailed throughout the battalion, bore the photo of a black college basketball player crying in victory with a basketball net around his neck; draped over his shoulders is the arm of his white coach. The text beneath it reads, “Slavery Reinstated,” and “Catch yourself a strong one.”

The picture, found online, sparked a formal equal-opportunity complaint and a division-level investigation. Five months into a yearlong deployment, two rising stars, Lt. Col. Frank Jenio and Command Sgt. Maj. Herbert Puckett, were fired from their positions leading 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team.

An Army investigation over the course of two weeks took 32 sworn statements from soldiers in Afghanistan and compiled the 47 slides used in the briefings.

The slides, which had appeared in the morning briefings for about two months, showed scantily clad women in provocative poses, a cartoon of a man kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach, and on the day after the racially charged slide, a man was shown hitting a woman in a slide above the words, “Slap a bitch.”
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PowerPoint slides spur ouster of CO, CSM