In Iraq, Security Theater or Just Plain Theater of the Absurd?

Unfortunately for General al-Jabiri, the evidences is stacked against him. Tests conducted at the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which included the wands and similar devices, found that "none have ever performed better than random chance."

According to Nordland, the wand, called the ADE651, is used mostly in developing countries and by no major country's police or military. To "use" it, you insert a card with a barcode into a holder connected to the wand by a cable, I suppose to tell it what kind of thing you're looking for. "It would be laughable, except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets," retired United States Air Force Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack told Nordland.

Apparently, proponents of the ADE651, which is manufactured by ATSC Ltd., say the user "must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device" -  qualifications that would seem to exclude every overworked, scared sentry standing on a sweltering Iraqi street. Once the user charges the wand by (I'm serious here) walking in place, the wand really does function like a Ouija board, operating by "electrostatic magnetic ion attraction" to swivel in the direction of explosives or guns or whatever the user has set the device to find.

Really what we're talking about here is "security theater," the term coined by author Bruce Schneier to describe highly visible but dubiously effective security "measures" (like pretty much everything the Transportation Security Administration does) that are designed to create the perception of safety, the better to encourage the public and discourage potential ne'er-do-wells.

But the magic wand of Iraq seems to veer away from security theater and into absurdity. Nordland writes that on a recent day, his driver and guard drove through nine security checkpoints that used the wand, and nobody ever discovered that they were carting around two AK-47s and ammunition. Nor did the wands prevent a pair of bombings, a little more than a week ago, that made for the deadliest day in Iraq in more than two years.

You can't stop all the attackers all the time, but you could actually try. For instance, you could buy bomb-sniffing dogs, which have proven results for a comparable price. But that's no good, because the dogs would take too long doing, you know, actual bomb detection. "Can you imagine dogs at all 400 checkpoints in Baghdad?" General Jabiri said, according to Nordland. "The city would be a zoo."