Dowsing for the win.

[earls]

http://gizmodo.com/5455692/ade+651-magi ... d-hundreds

"Literally, the $40,000 (apiece) devices did absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. Experts think the insides contained nothing more than a dumb RFID card. Powered by nothing. Nope, not even a power supply. Just some snake oil, if that. $85 million!"

"Even worse, "inventor" McCormick was a firm, open believer in dowsing (as in, finding water with a stick), and that's what the device was based on. Dowsing!"

"Now the money lost is bad, but the loss of life is worse. Immeasurable. Security personnel and Iraqi soldiers were using these powerless dowsing rod devices in the field to detect bombs at security checkpoints and who knows where else. Scores died with this murderous thing gripped tightly in their hands. Hundreds more when the security checkpoints, armed with these devices, failed to protect them."

"has been arrested and is awaiting trial"

[junglelord]

I bet there is more involved them him in such a ponzi scheme

I speak without *any* pre-knowledge about this, but:

It's hard to believe the organisation shedding the $85 million to this didn't already know it didn't really work. It's hard to believe that this aforementioned organisation would've needed BBC's help to find it all out. What's also hard to believe is that this news would've been high-priority for this organisation had BBC not disclosed this.

It must be of great peace-of-mind to have one person to point all fingers to, but this should urge all people to think hard about who actually is dumb here - and who is even dumber..

Almost everyone is jumping to the conclusion that the people who bought this were stupid. I doubt that. I think this guy approached someone in a position of power and said "Hey, if you can sign off on this gadget and make any complaints go away, I'll give you a 30% cut."

Someone deliberately decided to make this billions contract with him, without testing or opening the device.

I doubt the real criminal here is him... Not the only one, at least.

It seems to me that it's inevitable that more people knew about this, and decided to buy it just the same

[kevin]

I have made a suggestion to the BSD, British society of dowsers, that one of these should be tested by them.
That way it can be evaluated as to what it is capable of.
I hope You all think this out clearly?
If Your adjenda was a continuation of the deaths of soldiers to further justify the illegal war, what better way than to have everyone hoodwinked by such a device.
If it is a dowsing device , then the training needs to be evaluated , and those operating it been able to.
There are more things in heaven and earth than meets the eye.
Kevin

[Grey Cloud]

Here's a BBC article on this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 477601.stm

It's hard to get any sense out of any of this. It seems to a device which has a sensor connected to some sort of smart-card. In the article above some experts have said that the smart card is useless (unfit for purpose). It also mentions 'sniffing' TNT. What if the explosive is not TNT based?
The Iraqi defending the device is blaming untrained operatives for its failures. How much training is required to point and click a look for a light coming on or buzzer sounding? And how close to the explosive do you have to be?
The device's efficacy would appear simple to test - ten vehicles containing explosives, ten control vehicles with no explosives.

The US and UK forces don't appear to be using them but what about the other, non-Iraqi, forces?

Thirty years ago, I carried around the streets of Belfast a device designed to detect the signals for radio-controlled bombs. Surely things have moved on a bit since then?

[bboyer]

You'll need to view the video contained within the original link, GC. Here's a direct link to the YouTube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQMwXo1S ... r_embedded

You'll see that the "device" is nothing at all like what you're imagining it to be. It's simply an empty piece of plastic shell; the cards that are slipped into a separate "device" are bogus gimmicks--everyday theft-tags (how ironic is that?) used in shops, and do nothing; they don't even look to be of the RFID variety of tag but I could be mistaken. The whole operation sounds to be a complete con-job and scam. Not at all unlike the recent job pulled off by the Wall Street and global banking elite crowd.

Both ends of the transaction, seller and government-military-security buyer(s) ... what putrid skanks. Same for the "coalition" that made it all possible.

[Grey Cloud]

Doh! I somehow contrived to miss the link in earls' post.
Ye gods. Just when you think it can't get any worse...

[junglelord]

Follow the money, follow the money, thats where the corruption lies.


Like I said, this greased more then his palm...and Iraq is a huge sink hole for money.
Its all about money, not terrorist...not by a long shot.