Iraq is finally taking a hard look at the expensive hand-held bomb-detecting devices that explosives experts around the world believe are useless. The device is shaped like a gun with a metal sensor on the nose. If a bomb (or perfume, soap and detergent) is detected, the sensor moves toward the suspicious substance.

 In Baghdad, I've heard journalists and Iraqis deride it as a "toy" or "the Ouija board approach."

Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al Bolani told The Associated Press this week that Iraq would study "another alternative" if experts find flaws in the hand-held units bought from a British-based firm. British officials have banned the export of the device to Iraq and Afghanistan after a BBC report challenged its ability to detect explosives.

It's about time. Frustration over the device, whose official name is ADE-651, has seeped out of the interior ministry and into the streets, where Iraqis openly mock officers who use them at checkpoints. Arabic-language newspapers and TV stations have reported that the devices are useless; nobody's fooled anymore.

Earlier this week, a day after the hotel bombings that wiped out the offices of many of my colleagues in the Western press corps, another bomb went off at a forensics lab in central Baghdad. One of my Iraqi colleagues, Sahar Issa, went to the scene and met some outraged residents, including a man named Basim Mohammed Ismail, a 43-year-old husband and father of three.

Here's what Ismail said:
We were having breakfast when a terrific blast tore through our apartment. It was just one second, but it has caused so much destruction and pain. My 8-year-old daughter is in the hospital. Her beautiful face is full of glass and splinters. Her eyes - she might lose her eyesight. Her mother is there with her, and I am going back as soon as I take the rest of the family to their uncle's house.

How can such explosives move about the city? They can because the detectors we're using are useless. The government knows they are useless, and the officials in the ministry of interior know that, too....We know these detectors. We know they are useless and that they were rejected before by Japan -- 15 years ago! So, they sell them to the Iraqi government, to officials who make money from buying them.

What do they care about us? One week -- maybe two at most -- they'll still be repeating "We will compensate, we will deal out justice" and then they will forget.

If they ever do get rid of the magic wands, the Iraqis still have another controversial deterrant in their arsenal: a "fake" car bomb packed with real explosives - sans detonator - that officers drive around Baghdad to gauge whether Iraqi security forces at checkpoints can detect them. My colleague Warren Strobel wrote about the faux car bomb on his last visit; read it here.

Human Rights Watch just released a new report on the dismal state of human rights in North Africa, with a big section on Egypt and another chapter on Libya.

In both authoritarian states, HRW found a pattern of arbitrary imprisonment and a lack of freedoms of speech and assembly. The group also called on Egypt to lift the state of emergency, now almost three decades in place, that allows the government to make sweeping arrests and to hold detainees without charge for indefinite periods. HRW chided Egypt for what the report called torture at the hands of state security services, and called for a revamping of its forces.

Egypt and Libya are just two of 90 nations and territories surveyed by Human Rights Watch for its World Report 2010, a 612-page report on human rights practices around the globe. You can see the full report here.

Human rights activists are outraged today that a court in the United Arab Emirates found a member of the oil-rich country's royal family innocent of all charges stemming from his sadistic torture of an Afghan business associate in a brutal beating that was caught on tape.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, 40, the brother of the current UAE president, was cleared of all charges by a criminal court judge in the city of Al Ain.

Human Rights Watch criticized the handling of the case in a statement that called for the UAE to establish an independent body to investigate abuse and torture by security personnel and others in positions of authority. HRW also urged the UAE to publicly and unequivocally denounce the use of torture.

"If the UAE government really wants to stop torture and to restore its sullied image, one trial will not be enough," HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director, said in the statement.

The UAE, better known for the glitzy city of Dubai, took a major PR hit when the tape was made public. The incident sparked international outrage that led to the extremely rare prosecution of a royal.

Here's the video of the 2004 beating, which was first reported by ABC News last year. (Warning: It contains extremely violent and disturbing images including the use of a cattle prod and a spiked plank against the victim.) ABC reported that the beating was filmed at Sheikh Issa's request as part of the retaliation against an Afghan grain dealer whom the sheikh accused of coming up short on a barrel of grain worth $5,000.

The following is background on the case from the AP:

The tape surfaced last year in a U.S. lawsuit by Issa's former business associate, Texas businessman Bassam Nabulsi. He is suing Issa for millions of dollars he claimed he was owed for various business deals.

The tape shows a suspect, identified as Issa, viciously beating a man said to be the Afghan worker in an empty stretch of the desert. The defense alleged Nabulsi had the torture filmed in order to blackmail Issa. The victim, identified as Afghani grain dealer Mohammed Shapoor, survived the beatings.

The defense argued that Sheik Issa was left disoriented and impaired by a combination of dozens of drugs, including medicine for heart and back conditions. The list of drugs was submitted to the court, but not made public.

Last month, a forensics expert put on the stand by the defense testified that the mixture of drugs could cause "anger, suicidal tendencies, depression, aggression and loss of memory."

Had he been found guilty on all charges, Issa faced a maximum of three years in prison.

Al-Awad, the presiding judge on a three-judge panel, gave no explanation for the ruling, other than a reference to "diminished liability" on Sheik Issa's part, apparently a reference to his impaired state.

I'm embedded with the U.S. Army's 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division in southern Iraq. Yesterday, we attended Iraqi Army Day festivities in the town of Amarah in Maysan Province, which borders Iran. Some of the tribal sheikhs, provincial politicians, local journalists and Iraqi commanders in the audience expressed deep concerns over Iran's growing influence on Iraqi security forces, especially the militia-ridden police forces. But more on that later.

The day was a happy one for the young Iraqi forces who clearly took great pride in their service, exhibiting their newfound skills in a military parade that involved troops jumping through burning rings of fire, an Iraqi soldier in a protective suit disabling a homemade bomb and camouflaged commandos jumping from the backs of moving trucks.

Sure, a couple of U.S. Apache helicopters flew directly overhead at one point, drowning out the keynote speaker, but the day really did belong to Iraqis. A small group of U.S. officers watched from the reviewing stand at the invitation of their Iraqi counterparts. They made no speeches and kept a respectful distance, applauding along with the rest of the audience when some adorable local children sang patriotic songs during the festivities.

How self-sufficient Iraqi forces will be in the future is another matter altogether. Still, it was refreshing to see an all-Iraqi show of force.

Here are a few photos from Iraqi Army Day:

In the past few weeks, the Iraqi backlash against Iranian influence has become quite visible and pronounced.

The recent furor over the disputed Iraqi-Iranian oil reserves -- especially the now-notorious Well No. 4 at the southern Fakkah field -- only exacerbated the unease many Iraqis express over Iran's long tentacles in Iraq. I once heard the Lebanese journalist and political observer Rami Khouri insist that Iraq does indeed have a unity government, "one that's two-thirds American and one-third Iranian." Many Iraqis say the same thing, that Iran's meddling constitutes "a second occupation."

These thoughts most often were voiced privately, in conversations over dinner, say. But in the past few weeks Iraq has witnessed maimed veterans of the Iraq-Iran war marching in southern cities with signs reading, "I lost my feet in the war so that Iran can come occupy us?" And these are not disgruntled Sunni Baathists who haven't gotten the memo that their place in Iraq is gone. These were mostly Shiite veterans who share the same sect and many of the same religious practices of the neighbors to the East.

On televised call-in programs, such as the popular show "The Silent Majority," caller after caller rails against Iran live in primetime, accusing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of buying the Iraqi legislature or complaining that it's Iranian influence behind the crackdowns in some cities on alcohol, music, nightclubs and other vices that are banned in Iran.

This week, a telling cartoon appeared in one of the main Baghdad newspapers, Azzaman (which is generally pretty good, though it should be noted it's run by a businessman who served as a media chief under Saddam before defecting to the West). The cartoon, shown below, depicts an Ahmadinejad lookalike tugging the boundaries of Iran across neighboring Iraq.

There was no caption, and none was needed. The cartoon plays on the fears that, if left unchecked, Iran is going to keep expanding its presence until it swallows Iraq whole.

And then there was one.

Today the Multinational Force-Iraq was formally disbanded, making way for the U.S. Force-Iraq. In other words, no more "coalition of the willing." No more writing "U.S.-led forces" in news stories. It's an all-American war effort now, which is what many Iraqis thought all along.

A couple days ago I spent an afternoon interviewing Iraqis about the end of the coalition and came across two funny, sweet young men in a Baghdad kebob joint that was decorated with a big painting of the Last Supper. I asked the two restaurant workers -- one Christian, one Muslim -- whether the name change was a big deal. Here's what they said:

“The change doesn’t mean anything,” said Ausi Arlya, 17, taking a break from washing dishes.

“Yes, there is a difference,” argued his friend Hazem Abboud, 21, a waiter and aspiring artist. “Under the old name of multinational forces, you’d get confused. From now on, any problem that happens, we understand, ‘OK, it’s the Americans.’”

“It wasn’t just Americans in the streets,” Arlya said.

“We called them occupying forces. Very few people said ‘coalition,’” Abboud said. “Only the politicians who live inside the Green Zone said ‘Multinational Forces.’ The rest of us say ‘occupying forces.’”

They laughed.

 “I still prefer the American troops over our own Iraqi ones,” Abboud said. “The Iraqi forces we have are untrained, uncultured, and they went from tending cows to protecting the homeland. Now they’re saying music is forbidden? If that’s the way it’s going to be, I’d prefer the Americans.”