Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

It was interesting to note Colonel that that election sucess although tight was helped by Democrat supporters??

First day of unemployment, as I just finished my contract job yesterday (had held it for 2 years) and I have already gotten an interview scheduled.

It is in November, but that is fine with me, as I have quite a bit to do b/w now and then.

Typical. Ex-colonists just assume everywhere is American. Wear a hat and avoid easy brain damage over there.

But his main market was Iraq, where lives depended on bomb detection and where the bogus devices were, and still are, used at virtually every checkpoint in the capital.

Between 2008 and 2009 alone, more than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in explosions in Baghdad. Thousands more were injured, including 21-year-old Haneen Alwan, who was two months pregnant and had gone out to buy ice cream when she was caught in a bomb in January 2009.

"My life was completely destroyed, everything gone in an instant," she said. "I lost the baby and my husband divorced me."

Haneen, who is receiving treatment in neighbouring Jordan, suffered horrific burns to her face, hands and chest and has already had 59 operations. She blames the bombers but she also blames Jim McCormick.

"When people passed through checkpoints using these devices, they thought they would be safe," she told the BBC. "But they are useless. The man who sold them has no conscience. He is morally bankrupt. How could he sell them just for money and destroy other people's lives?"

An answer to that question comes from a whistleblower who has spoken exclusively to the BBC's Newsnight programme. He went around the world with McCormick as he sold the devices, but then became suspicious and confronted him.

"I said to him, 'if this really doesn't work I can't be any part of it.' McCormick replied 'It does exactly what it's designed to. It makes money'," he said.

The court heard that McCormick began his business by buying a batch of novelty "golf ball detectors" from the USA for less than $20 each. In fact they were simply radio aerials, attached by a hinge to a handle. He put the labels of his company, ATSC, on them and sold them as bomb detectors for $5,000 each.

He then made a more advanced-looking version which he was to sell for up to $55,000. The ADE-651 came with cards which he claimed were "programmed" to detect everything from explosives to ivory and even $100 bills. Police say the only genuine part of the kit - and the most expensive - was the carrying case.

Another senseless answer that only emphasises what I say. But one cannot expect anything else from a super nationalist and blinkered country that no sensible person would want to be like. Trying to be satirically popular is yet another characteristic of your ploy. You are dong and showing my submission well. Keep it up sonny.