Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell says now is not the time to change your travel plans or stop going to places where large groups of people gather. Boswell, a member of the U-S House Intelligence Committee, is also a retired military officer who got a top-secret briefing in the hours after Thursday’s terrorist bombings in London. “If they strike fear into us, and it’s pretty hard to say that they can’t, but then they’ve accomplished part of their goal,” Boswell says. “We just can’t let that happen.” Boswell says if there’s any good that comes out of this latest terrorist attack, it will be that the world community will “pull together with new vigor and new strength to say that this is unacceptable.” A group identifying itself as al Qaeda Europe has claimed responsibility for yesterday’s bombings in London. Boswell says “hopefully we’ll learn more” about the group, like whether it’s a splinter cell of the al Qaeda operatives who struck the U-S on 9/11. Boswell racks up a lot of frequent flier miles commuting between Iowa and Washington, D-C, and Boswell says he’s had some sobering conversations with his fellow passengers. Boswell says he is “convinced” that if a terrorist tries to hijack a plane over the U-S again, there will be no “hesitation” about an immediate confrontation that would down the plane before it could be used as an attack vehicle. Boswell, a Democrat from Des Moines, served in Vietnam and had a career in the military before returning to farm in south central Iowa.
