Joe Lieberman: “I think what ought to be acknowledged is that everyone in the Senate, everyone in America would like to get to the point…”

“I think what ought to be acknowledged is that everyone in the Senate, everyone in America would like to get to the point where we have 100 percent scanning of containers coming into this country--scanning for radiation because we are worried about the potential catastrophe of a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb in a container coming into this country. We know the number of containers coming in is enormous. Each day, more than 30,000 containers offload millions of tons at our maritime borders. We understand this requires two kinds of screening: First is radiation detection equipment to pick up, obviously, radiation emanating from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb; secondly, so-called nonintrusive imaging equipment, which is needed in case terrorists have shielded the nuclear weapon or dirty bomb inside some kind of material that will stop it from registering on the radiation equipment. There is no question in my mind that everybody in the Senate wants to get us to a point where we have 100 percent of the containers coming into America being scanned in the way I just described as soon as possible.”