With soft Arabic music playing in the background, Bitar and Fry lowered their heads as Gibbs began: "Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this marvelous meal. We thank you for this opportunity we have to share with each other and do great stuff for our country."
After grace, Bitar resumed with his vision of bloodless warfare. Hostage situations would be as easy as hosing down a whole group of people with the lightning gun, and "then you could separate them out: hostages and non-hostages," he said.
"Um, just the capability to employ force, achieve American objectives and protect ourselves and yet not kill," he said.
"I mean, this whole war on terror, that's exactly what we have to do. We have to be able to minimize our collateral damage because, frankly, we can't afford for the whole world to hate us for very long."
"They always will," Gibbs interrupted again.
Over the past year, Bitar has received almost $1 million to develop his weapons. That includes money from the Marine Corps, a contract from the Navy and a smaller amount of matching funds from the state of Indiana. Of all the products Bitar is developing, he describes a handheld lightning gun as the "Holy Grail." But there is at least one barrier he hasn't even approached.
"We haven't done human testing," Bitar said.
"We haven't done animal testing," Gibbs added.
"Yeah, not officially," Bitar said with a sly smile. He would not elaborate on any unofficial testing.
Anyone happening upon the Quantico Marine Base in April might have thought someone was staging a county fair. Brightly striped canopies crowded the grounds, and concessionary booths advertised snow cones, nachos and ice-cold sodas, as visitors milled about and long lines formed for barbecue and hot dogs.
This was the Force Protection Equipment Demonstration, or FPED, the world's largest trade show for counterterrorism technology. Instead of local crafts and game booths, vendors offered the opportunity to check out the latest in bomb containment devices, among other things. Booth after booth of space-age decontamination suits, newfangled barriers, advanced sensors, X-ray machines, weapons and data destruction devices clamored for people's attention, even as a discordant mix of Bond music and reveille drowned out conversation.
One booth allowed visitors the chance to shoot high-powered pepper balls at dummies. Taser International, the country's largest manufacturer of stun guns, was demonstrating its weapon on any willing takers, provided they'd sign a liability release form. Taser's stun gun (which delivers an electric charge through wires attached to two darts) works by disrupting the body's nervous system, immobilizing its victim. By mid-morning, Taser had more than a dozen volunteers, including Sergio, a dark-haired young man whose friends cheered and laughed as he sat in a chair to be zapped, one leg flying up straight in front of him as the jolt hit his body.
