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Iraq Swears By Dowsing Rod Bomb Detector

jggimi writes "According to the New York Times, more than fifteen hundred remote sensing devices have been sold to Iraq's Ministry of the Interior, at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 each. The devices are used for bomb and weapon detection at checkpoints, and have no battery or other power source. Sounds great, but according to a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, they work on the same principle as a Ouija board — the power of suggestion. He described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod. Even though the device has been debunked by the US Military, the US Department of Justice, and even Sandia National Laboratories, the Iraqis are thrilled with the devices. 'Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,' said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives."

4 of 652 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This kind of upsets me by BitZtream · · Score: 0, Troll

    There is no other reason?

    I understand they have oil and we want it, but there are PLENTY of other reasons to be there, even if you are too stupid to stop listening to politicians to realize it.

    The genocide and torture being a couple reasons off the top of my head.

    Get some perspective, not everything is done for money alone, even if you're too blinded by ignorance to realize it.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  2. Re:Insightful by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 1, Troll

    Oh god, bury the parent in down mods please.

    There is simply no evidence - no reason to even suspect - that dowsing is real. Study after study shows random results. Nobody cares about your grandfather or how good a man he was.

    The only ferrous part of us being pumped around is Hemoglobin. It's extremely weakly ferromagnetic, and you need MRI magnets to see changes in its magnetic field - it's called the fMRI. Even then we have to use very recent (as in, last 15 years) DSP technologies to sort out the noise.

    Unless you have metal on you, you can't even feel the enormous magnetic field of an MRI. How are you going to feel water flowing 5 feet under ground? We have to inject contrast fluid to get a good image - does he keep a stockpile of contrast to enhance his results?

    And yeah there's nuclear resonance (like how normal MRIs work) but those too are infinitesimal forces.

  3. Re:Insightful by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 0, Troll

    Pseudo-science is really harmful. Like those flu vaccines... convincing so many people they will die if they don't get a shot. I got H1N1 a couple weeks ago, I couldn't move for a day, didn't bother feeding myself. Nasty virus, but it didn't kill me.

  4. Re:Really ? We found Saddam's victims by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 0, Troll

    Whether he had any left ? Are you serious ? He had factories producing nothing but WMD's. That's confirmed too. Obviously at least some of these rockets did indeed work ... are you seriously claiming 5 factories made only 5 rockets ?

    Perhaps to Syria ? He had a serious beef with Israel, which foiled his nuclear weapons program. ... which leads to the conclusion that he either sold them, gave them away, or somehow managed to hide them away from America's soldiers.

    Those weapons exist. They killed, and masses of people died from them. Only an idiot would doubt their existence, or their numbers (meaning at least a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand rockets with nerve gas). Hopefully they've spoiled, but do you really want to take that chance ?

    And yes it's a nice anti-Bush slogan. It's also pathetic.