Saturday, April 26, 2008

The US Army Issues Polygraph To Soldiers In Afganistan and Iraq

Holy cow!

I didn't know about this until it was brought up by Bob Park in this week's column of What's New. So the US army thinks that they could improve security by using portable polygraphs.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We're not promising perfection — we've been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it's properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”


This is astounding, considering that the NAS study has concluded that such devices are useless. They must be desperate enough to make use of voodoo science (a nod to Bob Park) to ensure safety over there. I think it would have been cheaper to simply hire a psychic, or train an army personnel in the art of reading tarot card.

As Bob Park said, these portable devices should work as well as the non-portable versions.

Zz.

2 comments:

Hudson Smith said...

It's astounding how efficiently wasteful the American government has become in recent years...

Kent Leung said...

You mean the US government borrowing money from overseas countries to give everyone a $800 economic stimulus tax rebate just so the money can be spent on crap which is probably manufactured overseas and therefore worsening the US economy is wasteful?!?

good one GW