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Iraq Swears By Dowsing Rod Bomb Detector 652
jggimi writes "According to the New York Times, more than fifteen hundred remote sensing devices have been sold to Iraq's Ministry of the Interior, at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 each. The devices are used for bomb and weapon detection at checkpoints, and have no battery or other power source. Sounds great, but according to a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, they work on the same principle as a Ouija board — the power of suggestion. He described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod. Even though the device has been debunked by the US Military, the US Department of Justice, and even Sandia National Laboratories, the Iraqis are thrilled with the devices. '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."
Now you know (Score:4, Insightful)
where those billions and billions of dollars went.
Re:Now you know (Score:5, Funny)
On the plus side, these devices would have been just as effective at locating Saddam's WMDs as any other detectors.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Interesting)
He had a bit of success at it too.
Why? How? I do not know. He's is the best man I have ever known, and I trust him.
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually a hallmark of dowsers is they tend not to purposefully lie. They certainly believe what they're saying due to the strength of the idoemotor effect and confirmation bias.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Informative)
Thing is, they were the first to tell you they had no clue how or why they could dowse out water, but they could.
They could, could they? You know, I bet there are psychics and faith healers out there that would shovel you the same bullshit.
Sorry, until you've got a controlled study showing your little "witches" perform better than random chance, I'm gonna remain skeptical. Meanwhile, you should send one over to JREF... if her "powers" are real, she could win a million bucks! [randi.org]
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't disprove or prove anything.
That has to be the most ridiculously obtuse thing I've read in a long *long* time. Science and scientists are *specifically* dedicated to the process of disproving theories. Hell, one of the key things that defines a theory as scientific is that it's falsifiable.
Christ, the ignorance displayed by some is truly astonishing...
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if they are dousing out individual springs, that might be something, but as others have mentioned, proof that it happens any better than random is lacking.
Even when they 'find' water, proof that other places didn't have water is required for any substantive belief that they 'found' anything on a better than random chance.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Data is available from USGS online regarding the Aquifers. This one http://pubs.usgs.gov/ha/ha730/ch_c/jpeg/C011.jpeg [usgs.gov] might be helpful to you.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading something about it in New Scientist years ago (probably 1980 something). It was about research into magnetic fields and what happens when water moves and the jist of it was that some people are unconsciously sensitive to these fields.
I can't remember the details, but it does kind of make sense to me considering that there are lots of animals with sensitivity to magnetic fields and our own bodies are full of little tiny ferrite dots being pumped around. It doesn't make much sense to me when it comes to detecting explosives, but a fool and his money are soon parted...
That copy of New Scientist was given to me by my grandfather who taught me divining. It goes back centuries in our family.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Informative)
Presuming that those "tiny ferrite dots being pumped around" are iron in your blood, you're wrong. Blood iron isn't ferrous.
Divining has long been shown to be explained by the ideomotor effect, environmental cues [1], and confirmation bias. It isn't any better than chance.
If you think your abilities are genuine, allow me to introduce you to the 1 Million Dollars that must be waiting for you over at the JREF. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html [randi.org]
[1] Cues that anyone can pick up on, nothing that is unique to dowsing or dowsers.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
OTOH, detecting magnetic fields would be an interesting ability on its own, and there's a lot of pseudoscience associated with it. But, AFAIK, nobody has been able to demonstrate it outs
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Informative)
Mentioning James Randi's 'challenge' doesn't garner you (or him) any credibility. Its not exactly in the same league as an 'X' prize. He's backed out of his offer several times to my knowledge.
You will have to do better than that. The only 'backing out' I've ever heard of has really just been sour grapes from losers who couldn't even pass the preliminary requirements of minimal verification, much less the full test of scientific reproducibility.
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Informative)
Your explanation might work except all test requirements are agreed upon by both parties. The tests are always accepted beforehand by both parties. And the conditions are always mind-numbingly simple, and people with real abilities should have no problem passing them. Look at the list of some who claim to be Dowsers:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=87076
-> was given a list of people on the missing persons list, he claimed he could indicate whether they were dead or alive. he picked half dead, half alive. They were all dead.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=37686
-> never formally applied
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=33082
-> Would not allow analysis of his homemade 'amplifier'
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=29682
-> performed his own double-blind tests only to discover that he had deluded himself
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=28111
-> Withdrew his application
Which ones of these do you think were gypped by the JRF? See them at http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=43, and find me one that you think was treated unfairly.
Of the few people who have come forward to try to pursue the "I got gypped!" angle, I watched the videos and read the transcripts and they all failed miserably.
In short, you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who gets the chance to meta mod needs to fix this. Disagreeing with the parent does not make him a troll.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Please down mod the parent. People do not get down modded because others disagree with them. There is no -1 I think this guys beliefs are a crock.
A recommendation that the moderation system be abused to censor opposing viewpoints is certainly a troll at the very least.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Please down mod the parent. People do not get down modded because others disagree with them. There is no -1 I think this guys beliefs are a crock.
I agree, but actually, the negative mods were for "overrated", which means they disagreed with the "+1 interesting" mods. Thats valid, is it not?
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
'Either you have facts, or you have nothing.'
That is an interesting viewpoint. But there are no readouts from instrumentation here. And this isn't a peer reviewed journal. This isn't even a forum for science. Slashdot comments are nothing but individuals expressing their opinions and everyone is entitled to one even one most think is unfounded or ridiculous.
"Your parent pointed out facts. You want people to mod him down because you don't seem to like these facts."
No he stated his opinion of the current state of the facts. You in turn stated your own unfounded opinion of my views. I didn't say anything about my own view on the issue. But if anyone cares, I am highly skeptical to claims of dowsing.
I do however think that any previous studies on the matter aside the fact that soldiers who are literally dying in the field are finding the rods to work as well or better than other instrumentation at finding bombs merits a closer look.
Claiming that dowsing water works no better than chance is one thing since there is water all over the place. Even in Iraq bombs aren't exactly everywhere like water is. The chances of a man without instrumentation picking out the location of a bomb without knowing if one exists are plenty slim. Let alone for this to happen enough that the Iraqis are willing to bet their lives on the products.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"There are no viewpoints here. Either you have facts, or you have nothing."
Wrong. If that were the case, there would be a moderation option of "-1 Not Factual". This forum's rules are pretty open; people get to express their views whether they are right or wrong, scientific or anecdotal, fact or opinion. Disagreement is handled through response/discussion, not censorship.
Censorship (moderation) is used to control behaviors that would harm the quality of discussion. If you believe that expressing alterna
You don't have to believe in it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't ask me how it works - those witching sticks are just dead wooden sticks in my hands. But, I've seen it work, so I have to believe in it.
No, you don't. As Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
We use the scientific process precisely because we can't just trust ourselves. A few weeks ago, I climbed on a mountain, sat in the grass, and watched the clouds. Suddenly, the clouds started to move backwards and forwards. It's a miracle! I've seen it with my own eyes! Well, no. It's an optical illusion that some people get when staring into a bright light for too long.
Likewise, since all experiments have shown that dowsing rods work exactly as well as random chance, the most likely explanation for your father in law's ability is that he's able to subconsciously deduce where pipes go and where they are broken based on the effects these things have on the environment. That also explains why it doesn't work for you.
Re:You don't have to believe in it. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got a couple dozen acres with gas lines crossing it in places. I can tell where the pipes are laid because the ground is slightly off from when they backfilled the trench they dug, in certain lines, the grass grows differently because, I suspect, the drainage is different for that location, and the undisturbed ground.
The pipes were laid 20 years ago.
Now, a lot of people here are ALSO falling for the mystique of the sceptic. Just because you don't have an immediate explanation for something, doesn't automatically make the 'capability' false.
I believe it is possible that there may be clues that our bodies pick up, but we ignore with our often distracted conscious minds. Now, does that mean I believe in dowsing? No, it isn't an admission of belief, but I wouldn't discount that we might be ignoring some feedback from our bodies that we normally don't acknowledge.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Possibility_of_human_tetrachromats [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Water dowsers (and the general public) speak of underground water as if it were rivers, creeks, and pools; it's an easy mistake to make.
Anyone with a background in hydro-geology understands that underground water is more like layers. Look at a mountain cutout along the highway and you can see how many layers of rock exist in just a few feet of depth. Between each layer are fissures, water flows through such fissures pulled by gravity further and further down.
Drill deep enough and you reach a point where the
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Informative)
Even today, the city of DeQueen, Arkansas employs an old Native American in the water department. He has the willow sticks like father in law used, but he also has a pair of copper rods that he likes better.
That was such a fascinating story, I called up John O'Connor, Water Superintendent for DeQueen. Despite almost two decades with the city's water department, he knows nothing of such a man and denies that the city has used dowsing in his tenure or, to his knowledge, in his lifetime. Nor is he familiar with any local legends of such a thing. Since the department employs only 70 people, I'm pretty sure Mr. O'Connor is familiar with them all.
I assume your father-in-law's acuity with the "witchin' sticks" is equally fictitious, and that your personal experience is simple wishful thinking.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
ROFLMAO
You looked up the city, and you found John's name. Very good. But, we only have your word that you CALLED him. So, I watched the old dude using his dousing rods, and you claim to have talked to the old dude's boss. My word against yours, right?
Oh well. Whatever. You don't have to believe a thing, nor does anyone else.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fraud isn't even needed....
Builders tend to follow certain patterns when putting in wiring.
If you have seen a lot it isn't hard to guess where they are in the next building.
You don't even need to be aware that you 'know' these patterns... you can simple compare the rod with dombo's feather.. you are doing it all yourself.
Add some conformation bias and random change and you get nice results...
Another reason why (Score:5, Funny)
they shouldn't be allowed to have the bomb. On the plus side, there an easier target.
Maybe I should sell them my ballistic missile protection rock. Only 10 million dollars, and if you are hit by an ICBM contact me for a full refund.
Re:Another reason why (Score:5, Insightful)
they shouldn't be allowed to have the bomb.
Hmm ... you do realise that's Iraq with a Q, not with an N? The country with the nuclear weapons^Wpower program is next door.
Re:Another reason why (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because we're so much smarter than the Iraqis. We have never had dumb/superstitious people in charge of our military. Therefore they can't handle nukes and we can. /sarcasm
I'd argue that mutually assured destruction is dumber than what we're seeing here. Both are pretty shocking, but "magic bomb detector" risks at most several soldiers' lives, not, you know, everything.
In case you forgot, our leaders were the ones that relied on MAD. With all our eductation and logic, that is what we came up with. If this is the dumbest thing Iraq is doing coming out of Saddam's rule, with little recent history of competent leaders, they're doing pretty well. I wouldn't want them to have nukes, but we're not people who should have nukes either.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't argue with results. Even if you would say that without the MAD doctrine we would have survived without major issues, it's impossible ot argue conclusively against that MAD didn't not work.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Confirmation of the success of MAD could only come from the testimony of people who could and would confirm that they did not launch nuclear attacks against (US/USSR) due to fear of massive reprisal.
Either way, MAD is an idea, and it's one that works, at least in theory. If it worked in practice, it saved a large percentage of the world population from annihilation.
It's f'ing retarded to liken it, in any way, to bomb diving rods in Iraq.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say even less then that. Even relatively minor things such as border disputes or small scale conflicts require far more thought and consideration of worth if both sides are packing enough nukes to wipe out the other and claim to be willing to do so.
Someone wouldn't have needed to otherwise be willing to commit the other country to nuclear holocaust for MAD to have worked. Someone would have just needed to think more carefully before taking any action to provoke the other side on any issue that might h
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing that's a problem is the price tag! If they want to use dowsing rods, fine. It's not like the U.S. Army didn't try it too, but couldn't they just raid a dry cleaner?
Re:Another reason why (Score:5, Informative)
Agree, but MAD is hardly the best example... in fact, it actually makes a lot of sense, despite the fact that it is, indeed, mad. But look at some of the more ridiculous weapons exercises and theories funded by the Pentagon over the years -- who the hell else would come up with the idea of an anti-ballistic missile system based on a satellite and powered by a nuclear explosion? Or even more ridiculous stuff like the gay bomb [cbs3.com]. The Pentagon and intel agencies actually spent millions on "psychic warfare" projects at one point; one of the projects allegedly included a plan to develop some sort of time-travel based ABM device -- zap the enemy's missiles back in time so they can explode harmlessly in the past. Seriously. If the Iraqis are spending only $60k apiece on divining rods they are getting off cheap.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Although the American military budget funds a lot of nonsense, you have to admit that we get an awful lot of really cool side effects.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Agree, but MAD is hardly the best example...
Yeah... I must be badanalogyguy in disguise. Not the best comparison (by far), I just wanted to point out that while the Iraqis are doing stupid things with bomb detectors, we were setting up a situation where we and Russia would do much stupider things with much bigger bombs, so implying we can be trusted with those same bigger bombs but the Iraqis can't is absurd.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The US military has a research arm that gets it wrong sometimes, but we're not seeing psychic soldiers reading the minds of terrorists in the field or anything. We're not deploying the gay bomb anywhere. If anything, its sometimes interesting to hear some out of the box ideas. Look at the success of the predator drone, which is an old idea and one scoffed at for a long time.
The difference here is that Iraq is buying these things and using them instead of tested methods. They are letting guys with cars full
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Pentagon and intel agencies actually spent millions on "psychic warfare" projects at one point;
Personally I think the Pentagon's deeply credulous and well funded search for psychics to be better proof of their non-existence than the unclaimed Randi Foundation prize. You can claim Randi is biased against the existence of psychics (and of course this makes their powers not work). But these guys really, really wanted to find actual, no bullshit, no cold-reading, honest-to-God psychics. And they didn't.
Re:Another reason why (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's rewind time a bit; suppose Einstein's advice was followed and the U.S. didn't build the bomb. No Hiroshima or Nagasaki as testament to its effects. It is known the Soviet Union was working on their own as was Germany. After the war, both the Soviets and the U.S. rushed to grab German scientists. So even if the Soviet Union wasn't working on it during the war, they'd have been working on it after. And they were led by that great humanitarian, Stalin. Hmmmm....what would a Stalin do with nukes knowing no one could retaliate...I give up, I cannot guess...
Let's assume that Stalin gets a case of Empathy and decides not to nuke his enemies, even the real ones. Roll time forward a bit. Iran decides it needs nukes to get out the Kill-the-Jews vote in Islam. The U.S., having eschewed nukes because they were bad, would surely have pressured Israel into no nukes as well. There is no stopping Iran from getting a nuke, they need it to help bring back the Mahdi and well, y'know, there are still some undead Jews.
Then there are those nice N. Koreans who are about as well adjusted as a squirrel after his third cup of coffee. Would you like L.A. with that holocaust or just a bit of self-indulgent sugar?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We have never had dumb/superstitious people in charge of our military.
If you want examples of stupidity and superstition in the US Military, I wouldn't look at MAD. Read The Men Who Stare At Goats [wikipedia.org], detailing the Army experiments to try and kill goats with thought power, 'remote viewing' to spy on enemies, and the idea of creating psychic peace soldiers [wikipedia.org]. Scary scary stuff.
Oblig (Score:4, Funny)
I am interested in purchasing your bomb-repelling rock.
Confirmation bias (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it finds bombs, but youre spending hours wandering around and forgetting about the time you didnt find a bomb.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I haven't become a firm believer but I can't think for the life of me how I found those pipes consistently.
You didn't. Or at least no more consistently than before, on average.
I'll probably never figure it out, maybe it just placebo/memory tricks.
Yep, people remember the hits and forget the misses. Having your friends egging you on and telling you how great you're doing also tends to contribute to the perception of greater success.
About five years back a buddy of mine had me completely convinced that I was psychic. We were playing a card game, and I kept predicting the cards that would come up. Both of us were awed and amazed by it, and couldn't figure out any way how it could
It's not so stupid... (Score:5, Interesting)
But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board”
So in effect, this device will justify my search of anyone that I feel has a bomb. Even if I know it's bogus (and I'd not be surprised if the Iraqis do know this), it permits me to search anyone I want just because I feel they may have a bomb. I'd not be surprised if there was some correlation between suspicious-looking-folks and folks-with-bombs, so the power of unbounded searching is probably (somewhat) effective.
On the other hand, if they really do believe that these devices work, then the bombers may share those beliefs. That, also, could deter bombings.
Either way, it's a win for Iraq ... well, if you don't care about human rights and the millions of dollars.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
>>On the other hand, if they really do believe that these devices work, then the bombers may share those beliefs. That, also, could deter bombings.
This Israeli guy I know, big biomechanics guy, has worked on gait-analysis systems for Israel. You see, a guy who has a bunch of explosives strapped to his waist walks differently from someone normally. The system flags people down as they go through a checkpoint, and get searched and wanded more extensively than the normal line. When I asked him why they d
Expensive placebos are more effective. (Score:4, Informative)
In a target-rich environment? Sure! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And a clock going backwards is right 48 times a day (ie. twice as accurate!)
Works very simply (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Works very simply (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, the device does work very simply, and is almost 100% accurate.
1) poke object with rod
2) does object blow up?
3) if yes, it was a bomb
Re:Works very simply (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
May have a benefit.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bugs Bunny (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone see the Bugs Bunny cartoon [youtube.com] (@6:40) where he was working on an assembly line during WW2? He had a little hammer that he would tap bombs with to see if they were good or not. Of course one after another was a dud, until finally...
I guess if your divining rod detects a suicide bomber... then what? They detonate? I guess it is 100% effective in that case. Bomb detected.
Re:Bugs Bunny (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess if your divining rod detects a suicide bomber... then what? They detonate? I guess it is 100% effective in that case. Bomb detected.
Checkpoints are designed to minimize damage from a ... erm ... "premature detonation". The guy with the wand might get splattered pretty good if he's right up close, but everyone else makes it out just fine. It still sucks for the guy who's swinging that thing, but it's a loss in the bad-guys book because they can't afford to trade men on a 1 to 1 basis. There's only so many crazy people who'll strap a bomb to themselves.
Also, suicide bombers have been known to change their minds when confronted with such a situation. It's one thing to kill dozens of your enemies (even if they're civilians shopping for groceries) for the Glory of Allah - quite another thing to kill yourself and, if you're lucky, only take out one poor $2-per-hour rent a cop.
So What? We use "Lie Detectors". (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the U.S., a great many of our police departments and even federal agencies spend millions on a technology that is equally ridiculous and unprovable in any sort of peer-reviewed scientific study: Lie detectors. If we can have our lie detectors, then surely the Iraqis are entitled to their bomb sniffing dowsing rods.
The proponents of these devices, when confronted with the undeniable technical worthlessness of them, inevitably retreat to the claim that the actual benefits come from the psychology of having people being "investigated" by the devices believe that they are actually capable of something, and then watching their reactions.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but lie detectors do actually measure things. Heart rate, etc. They're not accurate, but they're not magical either.
This is completely retarded, instead of the lie detector's mostly retarded.
Something I learned from P&T:B.... Clench your ass muscle to fool lie detectors.
Re:So What? We use "Lie Detectors". (Score:4, Interesting)
No post about polygraphy is complete without a link to antipolygraph [antipolygraph.org].
For anyone interested, the site has a lot of great information, including a free book [antipolygraph.org] that goes into intimate details regarding how polygraphs are operated and how their results are interpreted to mean either "truth" or "lies". They even have the operator's handbooks and interpretation guides for giving an examination and information on how to "beat the box".
Very interesting stuff -- doubly so for anyone who might sometime be in a position where taking a polygraph is required for a job or security clearance.
Re:So What? We use "Lie Detectors". (Score:4, Insightful)
A quick search suggests that polygraphs normally outperform random chance. By how much seems to be highly variable.
It appears the scientific evidence is that polygraphy is not sufficiently sensitive or specific to be useful as legal evidence, but there's a big difference between a functional but inaccurate technique (i.e. one that outperforms guessing) and one that doesn't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also consider the history of the lie detector - it was adopted at a time when the FBI was infamous for being corrupt and taking kickbacks. Also consider the inventor, not an expert in any feild at all related to it but simply the guy that wrote the "Wonder Woman" comics.
It is a scam, on
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You think. The few reasonable controlled studies that have been done tend to disagree with you. Polygraphs perform fairly poorly, and probably perform better under laboratory conditions than they do in the wild, but they do appear to do better than chance, under controlled conditions.
Sorry, the ad hominem attack on the inventor doesn't really carry any weight, being a logical fallacy and all.
I know how this got started (Score:5, Funny)
Dear General Jehad al-Jabiri,
You may be surprised to hear from me. I am Mrs. John Mutube, former wife of the late general in charge of Nigerian counterterrorism forces. Upon his death I was amazed to discover 15000 (FIFTEEN THOUSAND) special BOMB DETECTION RODS. As my party has fallen out of favor, I find myself destitute. So I am offering you full possession of these BOMB DETECTION RODS for only the cost of shipping. Since the devices are heavy, I must ask that you pay for postage so I can deliver you the rods. Send either money order or credit card particulars to
Mrs. John Mutube
123 Mutube Street
Benin, Nigeria
I look forward to your successful counterterrorism endeavor.
I am, yours truly,
Mrs. John Mutube
Works real well, actually (Score:3, Funny)
What? Too soon?
Seen this before! (Score:5, Interesting)
Michael Shermer, famous Skeptic, gave a TED speech [ted.com] on "why people believe strange things." He actually brought one of those detectors out on stage, and said that US public schools were buying it as a marijuana detector, and paying hundreds of dollars for it. Looking at the image in the article, it appears to be the same device.
Re:Seen this before! (Score:5, Insightful)
Best quote of the article (Score:5, Funny)
I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,” General Jabiri said. “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:5, Funny)
Oh I know what you mean.
I mean, before America showed up it was a happy place. They had flowing meadows, and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the altruistic way of looking at it. If you want a more selfish reason to keep supporting them, try this one: the middle east is likely to be an important region of the world for years to come, until we find alternatives to oil. Don't you think it would be useful to have a contingent of power in the heart of the area? Cheney and Bush sure did.
In any case, it's silly for you to get upset about Iraq because we've been withdrawing according to schedule for many months now. If you don't like the schedule, that's fine, maybe you can come up with an argument against it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, when the Americans showed up, they were all like, "Hey lady, eat the apple off that tree of knowledge." The region went to shit after that.
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:5, Insightful)
Before America showed up they had a tyrant dictator who had the good sense to stay out of religious disputes in an area where people with religious disputes are prone to making their case with guns and bombs, even if it means taking their own lives.
We then invaded this not-so-idyllic nation with not so much as a whit of an idea about what to do to turn such a place into a thriving democracy, when doing so would be plainly unfair to the minorities in the religious disputes.
Democracy works when reasonable people come together and are willing to make decisions and sacrifices for the betterment of all the people. It does not work, sadly, in nations where it has been forced into existence replacing an existing corrupt government that the people had no faith in, and no reason to believe in the new government.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying, but it seems to me that the way to bring "peace" to the Middle East would be through reason, brutally slow diplomacy and encouraging expression of ideas and open debates, encouraging education of children male and female, etc. Basically, using the thin edge of the wedge. Instead we came in with guns and bombs, things these people are all too familiar with, and the ones who don't like us responded in kind.
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:4, Insightful)
'Democracy works when reasonable people come together and are willing to make decisions and sacrifices for the betterment of all the people.'
Ahhh... so thats why democracy hasn't shown any sign of being a successful form of government.
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny, but people seem to be tolerant of their own messes more readily than somebody else's, especially when it's their country. I'm not saying we didn't make a lot of things better, but if you want gratitude for coming in and fixing somebody else's country, man, the bar is high. Especially when you have all kinds of ethnic and religious fault lines running through the country, which pretty much means every time you scratch your ass, millions of people on one side win and millions on the other lose.
My problem with the war all along was that once the original WMD rationale didn't pan out, there wasn't any kind of strategic focus. I caught some flack from my fellow liberals when I said, well, doing such and so is probably good, or the surge will probably reduce violence. But the problem was never that there weren't worthwhile things to get done. It was that the "and then what happens" part seldom got thought through very far, and the "and then after that" part about never. We would invade "and then we'd be greeted as liberators." Ok and what happens after that? We'd rebuild X schools, yeah that's good. But then what happens after that? If we use much higher troop levels, we can control violence better (well, duh). And then what? Actually the surge was probably the most promising piece of strategy in the war, because there actually *were* a lot of things we wanted to be able to do in the breathing space that gave us. But we didn't know *how* to do them and most of them didn't happen.
And there was never a sequence of milestones that ended like this: "and then Iraq was able to manage its own internal and external security and most of our guys get to come home." Maybe it wasn't humanly possible to envision a series of milestones like that, between the Kurds and the Sunni and the Shia and the outside interference from Iran and Jihadi groups. Still, much of the strategic thinking in Washington seemed to amount to this: we were fighting there so we could get to keep on fighting there.
That's the problem with sending our good men and women -- and even the *bad* men and women too like those shits in the Abu Ghraib photos -- to die.. It's not that there aren't imaginable goals that are worth the cost, or that even helping the people of Iraq isn't worth the cost. It's that without a better strategy, the only certain payoff for the death of one of guys has been that we get to send *more* of our guys to be killed. That's a mindset that has for any practical purpose accepted defeat, but won't admit it for political reasons.
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:4, Insightful)
Because our 'good men' made the mess in the first place. If you make a mess, clean it up. That's good advice for a pre-schooler, and good advice for presidents.
It's also a recipe for an endless, bloody war. Especially when the populace doesn't want you there and the politicians you are supporting are massively corrupt.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you aware of how counter-insurgancy works, and the surge which is making it possible for us to leave Iraq in relative peace? Basically, we put enough soldiers in to defend the people as long as they would tell us who the bad guys were. We had to rely on informants.....if they didn't want us
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Really? Do you have a reason to think that the majority of the populace doesn't want us there?"
Well according to the philosophy on which our nation is founded. The people of Iraq democratically electing a government that in turn has passed numerous measures saying they are capable of taking care of themselves and telling us to leave means that is what the populace wants.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you arrived at my home uninvited break down my door and force your way into my home at gunpoint. Refusing to leave when I repeatedly ask you to on the basis that you want to clean up the glass may not be the best idea.
We were bombing Iraq long before we invaded. We invaded with no cause and then forced them to elect their own government. That government then passed a proposal telling us to leave their country. We ignored that so we can 'rebuild'. Of course we are mostly using their money to do this rebui
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Society has disadvantages, but most of the time the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
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Way I see it, if you live in a Democracy you kind of have to take responsibility for the monumental fuck-ups of your leaders. Our system isn't supposed to be so easily subverted to achieve the personal ambitions of one person. I'm pretty sure the fact that it was means that we did something wrong.
Yes, and at that time I was extremely upset with Bush for a while for pushing us towards an unpopular war. Then one day I heard a commentator who said essentially, "these people who say, 'no blood for oil' don't realize that most Americans would answer them and say, 'why not?" That's when I realized it's a much deeper problem than a single politician going over the deep end. The fact is a good portion of the country views the world as a wild place that soon is going to drag us into another world war and
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should our good men and (and a few women) have to die to 'help' these people?
I agree insofar as "these people" refers specifically to "heads of Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives" who are wasting a lot of money, refusing to admit they bought snake oil, and then handing them out to Iraq's own good men (and probably not many women) who are putting their lives on the line.
Because those people are assholes and any country deserves better than that.
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:5, Informative)
Why should our good men and (and a few women) have to die to 'help' these people?
They have oil, and lots of it. As do their neighbours. You seriously have not heard? There is no other reason.
The US alone uses something like 20 million barrels a day and rising, while production is well under half that and falling.
That's a billion dollars per day, and set to rise dramatically as production fails to rise with global demand.
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are an American, Englishman, Frenchman, German, Australian, Canadian or other western individual your country, civilisation and way of life depends 110% on keeping those barrels of oil flowing into your trucks, tractors, machinery and cars.
Without those barrels of oil your lifestyle will go back to 1900's style in many ways and quite a few of you will die. Coal of course can pick up the slack in many areas of energy production but then be prepared for the pollution and death that it brings...1900 style fogs of coal particles. Food production will decrease and the labour needed to produce it will go up by tenfold so without being alarmist millions of people in the less fortunate parts of the world will die without the wealth of cheap western food that much of that oil grows that keeps them fed.
As for the environment and CO2 emmissions without oil, what we're putting out now will be like a trickle compared to using coal.
It seems rather hypocritical to me to rail against Blood for Oil while living extremely comfortably in an advanced western society directly reaping the benefits of having that oil in the fuel tank of your car or providing power to your public transport or the plastic for nearly every type of luxury possible and fertiliser for your food that makes tomatoes and potatoes worth less than $1000 a tonne. Especially hypocritical is the western metro, urban left who have the more than anyone else on the entire planet to lose if the oil stops...
I guess it's easier to project the guilt onto the big bad rich white men. Kinda like how many junkies blame their dealers for the state of their own lives...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves
Canada #2
Iraq #4.
If we stopped exporting the stuff we'd have enough for ourselves for a longgg time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you mind pointing out the actual hypocrisy that you're perceiving? Let me see if I understand you: "1. You enjoy the benefits of oil. 2. You don't want people to die to ensure cheap access to that oil. 3. Therefore you're a hypocrite." I'm completely missing how 1 and 2 lead to 3. Isn't it possible that I want to pay more for oil? Or that I want our country to work to eliminate our dependence on oil? Or I believe that fighting for the oil is actually a terrible way to accomplish our goals? Why,
Re:This kind of upsets me (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems rather hypocritical to me to rail against Blood for Oil while living extremely comfortably in an advanced western society directly reaping the benefits of having that oil...
It is not hypocritical to believe that we should all obtain our oil on the free market. Note that the Iraq war has *not* made oil cheaper: in fact it has got five times more expensive. The Iraq war has not improved the lifestyle for those of us in the belligerent countries.
I guess it's easier to project the guilt onto the big bad rich white men. Kinda like how many junkies blame their dealers for the state of their own lives...
In the four years I spent as a drug counsellor I never heard any drug users blaming their dealers for 'the state of their own lives'.
Almost invariably, a drug users dealers are his friends and his friends are his dealers. Drug 'pushers' are mythical beasts.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems rather hypocritical to me to rail against Blood for Oil while living extremely comfortably in an advanced western society directly reaping the benefits of having that oil in the fuel tank of your car or providing power to your public transport or the plastic for nearly every type of luxury possible and fertiliser for your food that makes tomatoes and potatoes worth less than $1000 a tonne. Especially hypocritical is the western metro, urban left who have the more than anyone else on the entire planet to lose if the oil stops...
It is only hypocritical if we actually had a choice. The fact that we have been lucky enough to be born into the receiving end of the oil-based economy does not mean that we have to shut up about it. On the contrary, it is very hypocritical to defend Blood for Oil just because you're the one enjoying the benefits. "Oh yes, murder for money is totally OK, because I'm paid off by the assassin!" I find your morals objectionable!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, I don't buy into the notion that we wanted to go in and "steal" the oil. It's perfectly reasonable to have a strong interest in the stability of the unstable
Re:Security theater... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You better call him because the Randi folks would give him a million dollars if he could do that.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html [randi.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have some actual examples of unreasonable changes they've demanded? Every time somebody points me toward historical examples, it usually ends up with the claimant demanding that JREF front a bunch of money to pay for something. I'm interested in which case you're thinking of.
Re:Water for Thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One day he had stopped his truck by our orchard, taking one of his perfectly untimed smoke breaks, and the subject of dowsi
Re:Water for Thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is incredibly easy to be skeptical and cynical, until you have seen something that rivals the best magician's trick. From a guy who spent most of every day of his life by himself.
So did you believe the magician's claim that he has supernatural powers, too? If an old man with a stick and a talent for miming can fool you into thinking that dead wood can turn "into a straining, curving, living thing" and detect water, I've got a card trick to show you.
In my mind there was simply no way you could hold a branch and make it do that -- the branch itself wanted to do it, and did it.
I've located the source of the problem, highlighted above.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots of interesting things in life that science does not have all mapped out. Reading someone's thoughts, for example. It is impossible to intelligently debate these things in an online forum such as this. The polite thing to do is to agree to disagree.
No, the polite thing to do is concede that the scientific method has been used to check these sorts of claims, and they've inevitably been bunk. The rational thing to do is yield to facts and quite holding on to childlike superstition.
Now, keep in
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
much of modern forensics "science" is in a similar state in this country. Do you really believe they can match a smudged fingerprint to a single person with 100% accuracy
Ah, so the fingerprint process with, say 99% accuracy, is equivalent to the Iraqi M50/50 Bomb Divining Device. Right.
So until we are in a place where everyone has a basic understanding of scientific principles ...
I'd suggest you start with your own education. You clearly missed the entire section on probability and statistics.