WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Congressional Democrats urged the administration Tuesday to take another look at screening airliner cargo in light of missing explosives in Iraq.
Reps. Jim Turner, D-Texas, and Edward Markey, D-Mass., both senior members of the House Homeland Security Committee, said they sent a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, urging the administration to "reverse its opposition" to screening all passenger airline cargo.
"The same explosives that disappeared from the unguarded facility in Iraq could end up in the cargo hold of a passenger plane in the United States," Markety said.
The Democrats said Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology officially reported Oct. 10 that 377 tons of the explosives HMX, RDX and PETN from the Al Qaqaa site were missing and likely in the hands of terrorists.
"After the tragic terrorist attack (on a Russian school) in Beslan, (the U.S. Transportation Security Agency) began screening cargo placed on some passenger flights entering the U.S. from Moscow," Markey said. "The technology clearly exists to screen cargo."
