Silly String goes to war.

• Position: IRAQ - Brief article

Last year, Marcelle Shriver of Stratford, N.J., had a strange request from her son Todd, 28, a soldier serving in Iraq: He asked for Silly String. But Todd's reason was quite serious: American soldiers were spraying it ahead of them to detect invisible bomb tripwires. The plastic goo is light enough to hang on the wires without tripping them. Shriver sent Todd a dozen cans, then sought donations through local churches. The news soon spread through radio and the Internet, and Shriver collected more than 80,000 cans. Several thousand...