Every police checkpoint in Iraq, I’ve just learned, has been equipped with a magic bomb detecting wand that is apparently objectively useless, but which Iraqi cops and soldiers swear by.
“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. He went on to say, “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.”
The company that sells them, for $20,000 – $60,000, claims that they can find “guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high.”
Yes, it can find truffles too. How does it work? “Electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” of course.
The linked article seems like an April fools joke. The reporter describes using one of the wands in a fruitless effort to try to “detect” some AK-47s, and the general telling him, “You need more training.”