ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
In Baghdad this week, several devastating bombings left more than 60 people dead. Those bombings also raised questions about the effectiveness of the many checkpoints that blanket the city.
As NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports, bombers have been able to travel with near impunity, even to some of Baghdad's most secure neighborhoods.
LOURDES GARCIA: The bombings have left Baghdad jittery. Most of the streets are empty except for the cars pooled around Baghdad's hundreds of checkpoints.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLES)
GARCIA: At this one in the neighborhood of Karradah, a policeman holds a handheld bomb detector. He marches past a waiting car, looking for a tiny antenna to swivel, the supposed sign that there are explosives in the vehicle.
Abu Moussa is a member of the Iraqi army. He swears by the machines.
ABU MOUSSA: (Through Translator) The device does work, and I can show you that. Go put one single bullet in any of those cars, and the device would detect it.
GARCIA: But the wand-like machine has recently come under scrutiny in the U.K. where the ADE 651, as it's known, is made. British authorities have banned its export and detained the head of the company that makes the device for fraud.
Iraq's government says it will launch an investigation into how well the device works. It also says that the wand is not the only defense it uses against bombers. But on a recent trip across town, NPR passed through a dozen checkpoints in different parts of the city that were exclusively relying on the device. Soldiers working the checkpoints said it is the only detection method they are trained to use.
Hussein Qassim is a 32-year-old taxi driver. He says people are worried that elections slated for March 7th will prompt more attacks.
HUSSEIN QASSIM: (Through Translator) I expect more violence in the run-up to the elections. All the people are scared. They are afraid to go out.
GARCIA: And he says he doesn't believe the checkpoints can prevent bombers from getting through.
QASSIM: (Through Translator) The security men are doing their job properly, but it is the devices that are bad quality. They are useless and only cause traffic jams.
GARCIA: Some U.S. military officials have charged that the machines are little better than divining rods. The head of U.S. forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, says the U.S. military is trying to train Iraqis to use other methods.
RAY ODIERNO: It is very sophisticated how they hide these explosives. You cannot judge it by the naked eye. It takes a certain amount of expertise to determine if there's, you know, explosives in the vehicle.
GARCIA: For the first time, in attacks this week on a string of hotels, insurgents used small arms fire to disable the checkpoints. That allowed the car bombers to get closer to their targets, says General Odierno.
ODIERNO: Although we had had some intel that said they were going to try to conduct some of these attacks under the cover of small arms fire, it's the first time we'd actually seen it.
GARCIA: How effective the checkpoints here are will go some way to determining how quickly U.S. troops can withdraw from Iraq. The U.S. military says the bombings are just a spike in what has been a period of relatively low violence. That's scant comfort to the people affected by the blasts.
ALI NAZAR: Broke. All this is broken.
GARCIA: On one of the streets where the attacks took place, Ali Nazar, a furniture salesman, shows his cracked storefront window. He says it's unacceptable to still be faced with this level of violence here.
NAZAR: The Americans couldn't stop talking about that Nigerian who tried to blow up a plane - talking about something which did not happen. But here, there are attacks every day, but they say it's not a big deal. Is Iraqi blood so cheap?
GARCIA: Haji Ahmad Hafudh is also a furniture trader. He blames Iraq's government for buying the bomb detection devices in the first place.
HAJI AHMAD HAFUDH: (Through Translator) They know it doesn't work. They bought something on the cheap. I've traveled with weapons on me through checkpoints and have never been stopped.
GARCIA: He says Iraqi government leaders have no one to blame but themselves for the security lapses. He won't vote for them, he says, in the upcoming elections.
AHMAD HAFUDH: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA: We do not believe in the people in power now, he says. I'm talking as a person from the streets, he says. I do not feel proud of such government because it is a failure.
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Baghdad.