Associated Press
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee said Tuesday that Congress must pass a bill to require luggage on all commercial airplanes to be screened.
Currently, carry-on bags must be run through scanners, but checked bags are screened only if they are chosen randomly or by a computer program.
The Baggage Screening Act — introduced by Inslee, D-Wash., and Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio — would broaden that to all items carried in jetliner cargo holds.
"Americans have an expectation that the bags in the belly of an airplane will be screened for explosive devices. That expectation is unmet at this moment," Inslee said. "We have the technology."
At a news conference Tuesday, Inslee was joined by Bob Monetti, who lost his 20 year-old son, Rick, in 1988 when Pam Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. An explosive device in the cargo hold brought the plane down.
Monetti said the airline safety measures Congress now is considering focus more on knives than bombs because terrorists used sharp instruments on Sept. 11 to hijack four airplanes. However, he believes the government needs to be prepared for other types of terrorist threats.
Screening baggage "is so basic and so simple," said Monetti, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103. "It seems almost ridiculous."
Meanwhile, Rep. Jim McDermott broke from the bipartisan support for the attacks on Afghanistan to criticize the Bush administration, worried that no comprehensive strategic plan is in place to handle the conflict.
In a two-paragraph statement issued Monday, McDermott, D-Wash., said a "scant four weeks" doesn’t seem long enough to plan and implement an operation.
"The attacks against New York and Washington, D.C., took many months, even years to plan," the statement said. "We should be very cautious about claiming success too quickly. It smacks of a certain arrogance we can ill afford at this crucial juncture in our nation’s history. I’m not so sure President Bush, members of his administration or the military have thought this action out completely or fully examined America’s cause."
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