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Export ban for useless 'bomb detector'

...It's a predictable result of free market policies.
Is that a little 'highlight' heard in a lecture somewhere?

Which is only possible because free markets exist.
Okay I'll bite (and go OT), what exactly (are you talking about that) "is only possible because free markets exist"? Evil?

Regardless, it's all Obama's fault. :)
 
The BBC reports refer to 'thousands' of the devices being sold to Iraq.


I can imagine there's a few red faces amongst the purchasers of the thing now.
It is mind-boggling that so much money can be spent on something clearly so worthless; I'm not sure what that says about the people making the decisions.

Luckily for Jim McCormick, the regimes he's sold this thing to are all peace-loving and unlikely to send a hit-squad after him for making them look stupid. Oh, wait...
 
And policemen manning checkpoints in Baghdad have told the BBC that you need to be relaxed to use the ADE-651 and that it does not work properly if the user is stressed or has a high heart rate.

In other words, the message which has got through to the frontlines is - if it does not work, blame the operator not the device.
"The device was giving a reading for the wrong person! It was showing a reading for the attendant out in the parking lot!"
 
you need to be relaxed to use the ADE-651 and that it does not work properly if the user is stressed or has a high heart rate.

Not wishing to be picky, but isn't this a fairly important drawback in a device that claims to be a bomb detector? I would imagine that users looking for bombs probably have a level of stress and a heart rate above average.

Of course it must be a manufacturers dream when your customers give you the credit when it "works" but not the blame when it doesn't. At least if you are a crook who doesn't care that you are supplying non functioning equipment that leads to innocent people being killed.
 
Luckily for Jim McCormick, the regimes he's sold this thing to are all peace-loving and unlikely to send a hit-squad after him for making them look stupid. Oh, wait...

He'll be fine - he'll set up one of his detectors to go if in the unlikely event that he ends up in close proximity to an evil git who has no qualms about other people dying provided they get paid. Now where could he find an example to allow him to "calibrate" it?
 
You guys assume innocent stupidity, but you forget that you can sell a crony government anything with a few bribes and kickbacks in the right places.

Not many government officials are that stupid, but plenty are that corrupt.
 

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