Checkpoint technologyIraqis use "magic wand" at checkpoints to detect explosives; U.S. officer: this is "laughable"
Published 5 November 2009
The Iraqi government has spent tens of millions of U.S. aid dollars to buy thousands of “magic wands” which are supposed to detect explosives at checkpoints; one American officer says the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board”; another officer says that to believe the claims of the British company which is selling the device, and of the Iraqi authorities that swear by it, “would be laughable” — except that people are dying as a result; “[the company and Iraqi government have] crossed an insupportable line into moral depravity” he says
We know why terrorists and insurgents use sucide truck bombs to kill hundreds of Iraqis and destroy government buildings. Now we know why is it that they reach their targets, often having to drive through several checkpoints which are located throughout Iraq’s main cities: The Iraqi military has equipped the soldiers manning the hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq with what American military and civilian officials say is a useless technology — with many pointing out the the word “technology” should not even be apllied here.
The New York Times’s Rod Nordland writes that the small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. The device, however, works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired U.S. Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.
Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.
With violence dropping in the past two years, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has taken down blast walls along dozens of streets, and he contends that Iraqis will safeguard the nation as American troops leave. The recent bombings of government buildings here, however, have underscored how precarious Iraq remains, especially with the coming parliamentary elections and the violence expected to accompany them.
Nordland writes that the suicide bombers who managed to get two tons of explosives into downtown Baghdad on 25 October killing 155 people and destroying three ministries, had to pass at least one checkpoint where the ADE 651 is typically deployed, judging from surveillance videos released by Baghdad’s provincial governor. The American military does not use the devices. “I don’t believe there’s a magic wand that can detect explosives,” said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training for the American military. “If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work.”
The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,”
