A reservist with the 98th Division (Institutional Training), Major Scott McConnell served as the G3 advisor to the 5th Iraqi Army Division in 2004-2005. In this interview, he begins by describing the predeployment training at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, saying, "The whole experience there from start to finish was taking master sergeants, captains, majors and lieutenant colonels and putting them into the private-going-through-basic-training mindset." As such, he added, "There was a lot of leadership and management brainpower that was really stifled for the whole time we were going through this mobilization process." He also states that the training in Kuwait was repetitive but better because they had up-armored Humvees with Blue Force Tracker and .50 caliber machine guns. Once in Taji, Iraq, McConnell raves about the outstanding briefing they received on "the Iraqi culture, the mindset and how to deal with it. It was probably the best training we had gotten to that point." Normally the assistant information management and technology section officer for the 98th, he was selected by Colonel Bradford Parsons to be the G3 advisor because he was known to have had battalion S3 experience and, "also as an aviator, he wanted aviation assistance with getting him air assets for himself and the Iraqi general." When McConnell joined up with his Iraqi unit, he found that one brigade had completed training and was actively engaged in Fallujah, one brigade was in the final stages of basic training, and the third brigade had not been formed. Talking about the 5th Division's leadership, McConnell says they were "a bit disjointed and fairly disengaged. They were still in the garrison mindset … and basically in denial that they had a brigade that was actually fighting the fight. It was probably 50 percent filled with competent staff and leadership and the other 50 percent were absolute incompetents by our standards." Other problems faced included an insufficient number of interpreters, separated offices, strained relations between the Iraqi division commander and his staff, and difficult training situations. He does note positively that the 5th Division was partnered with the 1st Marine Regiment, saying, "The regiment was great as far as supporting the whole concept…. They bent over backward to support the Iraqis, helping them set up a base of operations and learning logistics and whatnot. That worked really well." McConnell also says that, by the time he left, the Iraqis "were a moderately competent division staff that could work through serious issues." He closes by saying that his deployment was a "great experience," one that made a real impact on the Iraqi Army.

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