How to get Baghdad cars out of the way of diplomatic motorcades? The old answer — an escalation of force beginning with thrown water bottles and ending with rifle fire — clearly isn’t in the cards after Nisour Square. So what’s left to try?
The State Department is experimenting with an idea to make the Baghdad streets both safe and stylish. Convoy drivers will be fitted with — yes — laser helmets able to emit a beam of bright light to blind errant and potentially dangerous motorists.
Seriously, from ABC’s The Blotter:
Security experts say the lasers, emitting a green beam and already in use at some U.S. military checkpoints in Baghdad, overload the optic nerve but, if used from at least 10 feet away, will not cause any permanent eye damage. …
“I’ve had them tested on me, and while it is certainly uncomfortable, like a flashbulb going off in front of your face, there is no permanent damage whatsoever,” said Tony Diebler, a former State Department security official who now works at Cohort, International, the company providing the lasers and helmet cameras to the State Department.
Huh. A former State Department security official who now sells security equipment to the State Department. I’d say that might be something the inspector general should look at, but, you know….
