IRA Scum

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with alqaeda the situation is very different, there are no civillians or innocents to target, they are killing their enemy wherever they fight them, in a bus stop, on a train, in a restaurant or anywhere. to them we are all infidels and they are at war with each and every one of us.

 

Sorry, AMaster, but what do you base your comment on?

Seniora Sgrena is a professional journalist, with the Middle East as her field of expertise. One who is sharing insight on and impressions of the situation in Iraq with us. Experiences she made first hand.

What do you in turn have to offer to call her or anyone taking her report into consideration paranoid individuals? A medially unaffected mind and lots of trips to Iraq wont be on that list, I hazard a guess. So please.

I admit it sounds off at first. But when I take the extremely poor record of US actions in Iraq into account, her version becomes more likely. And its not a premiere that journalists were targeted by the US forces in Iraq anyway.

-Edit- My apologies, Beren. I did not mean to ignore your authority as a mod. Btw, nice new portrait the sparrow has, aye?

[ July 30, 2005, 21:51: Message edited by: Dendri ]

 

yeah right. There are about 5 people in the entire world who believe the IRA. One is Tony Blair, one is George Bush, and the other 3 are remote welsh hill farmers

 

There's a difference between talking about peace and turning your back on a previous enemy. The IRA is still a terrorist organization to the FBI and probably Scotland Yard as well. In time the IRA may get out from under the microscope, but it won't be any time soon.

 

Why the hell should the FBI worry about the IRA?

 

Yes is puzzling why Blair is on the side of people that would want nothing more than to have him dead. He is even on the so-called "Colombia 3" side of things! There are rumours that it was England, not Ireland that sneaked them out of Columbia (would Ireland really have the facilities to do such a thing?), for which they are charged with teaching FARC rebels bomb making techniques (surely a conviceted IRA man wouldn't do this!)

Interesting is that before James Monaghan went on his wee holiday, he beat his wife harshly, upon his return he gave her another loving beating, yet people want these people free...

T2Bruno, I don't see Osama bin Ladin being invited to the Whitehouse for tea on any Muslim Holidays, yet a former IRA commander gets this special honour every St Patricks day.

 

Well, I hope that with their peace declaration they'll actually stop the killings, at least. It's a step in the right direction.

On a side note, imo, any act specifically designed to inspire fear and horror among an enemy is a terrorist act. It might be done by a person, organization or state - that changes nothing. It might be in war or in peace - sometimes, the actual state isn't easy to determine, like in Israel or Iraq. The WWII "strategic bombing" both sides engaged in (Coventry, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo and hundreds of other examples) were as much terrorism as what Al-Queda has ever done. I'm not such a history expert, but I don't think there is any country that hasn't done what would fall under this definition of terrorism.

There is an old anecdote that in the Hellenistic age, a notorious pirate was finally captured and taken to Alexander the Great to be judged.
- With what right do you make the seas unsafe? - Alexander demanded.
- With the same you make the lands unsafe, - the pirate answered. - But I do it with one stinking ship, so I'm a pirate - and you do it with a great army, so you are an emperor!

 

This is not an end to the IRA; they still run all the organised crime in the city, well, their part of it. It costs Britain over 600 million a year to keep their military units in N Ireland, this is money that could be better spent on Iraq, so all it is, is give the IRA a bunch of concessions, behave and no s**ting on the English shore for the forceable future, pull the towers and soldiers, and lets put all that money to better use... or not

 

Barmy, one reason the FBI take a strong interest in the IRA is that America (and of course infamously, LIbya) for a long time provided one of their regular routes via which to obtain arms. George Harrison, the verteran Irish-American who smuggled stolen US army guns and ammunition to the IRA is conseratively reckoned to have shipped them somewhere been 3,000 and 4,000 weapons until he was shut down in the early 1980's. In one of his more spectacular coups he stole 500,000 rounds of ammunition from one base, apparently with covert assistance from troops there. The FBI for a long time had a special squad devoted to shutting down such smuggling, whether given recent political changes it's still in operation I don't know but I can imagine the FBI keep a close eye on Irish republicanism in the States.

 

Lets stop killing Iraqi civillians, and concentrate on making our countries safer from a more dangerious peoples - the Chavs!

I am happy for the military units to be disbanded here, but lets have more police to sort out our real problems.

 

If that's N.Ireland's police force let's try having a police force not composed of either terrorists or people linked to terrorists and that is blatanty bigoted. Renaming it as Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) is a nice cosmetic change and no more.

As for disbanding military units, um, let's not forget the only area of the UK where private gun ownership is still a big deal and let's not forget 90 per cent of those weapons (around 130,000 firearms) are in Unionist hands. Decommissioning is a big deal, but compared to that arsenal the IRA are amateurs. Funny how that and the subject of decommissioning for ALL sides never gets touched upon.

 

When talking about all sides decommissioning, I hope you mean all sides which includes other Republican terror organisations in addition to the various Unionists.

You might not like the PSNI at the moment (it still has a long way to go, as far as improvements are concerned), but how can more Catholics join up, if they are physically punished for joining? I had a friend that joined up from Poleglass (a Nationalist area new Lisburn), but instead of people seeing this as a positive change, they called her a traitor and her home was bombarded with petrol bombs (this happened 2 years ago), dispite having young children in the house. Needless to say, she moved to Manchester, and seems much more happy there.

If you really want peace here, you should not be concerned about which group has more arms, but who is stepping forward to make changes happen (and this case its the IRA).

 

Cuchulain, if I really want peace there I should definitely be concerned with the fact that one community has access to enough arms to equip many medium size armies. Ignoring that fact given that N.Ireland had the biggest population movements between WWII and the Yugoslavian crisis via refugees fleeing to camps in the Republic and house burnings would be ignoring a very real situation that had the potential to occur again.

The PSNI could be reformed as the S.African police was, which let members of the ANC join. In the same way members of the main terrorist groups could be taken on as members if the situation keeps on improving. After all, the ANC were seen as terrorists by the S.African govt. for years and the Garda Siochana (Irish police service) retained many former Royal Irish Constablury members who had not been beloved of the Irish people during the Anglo-Irish war and the nascent army was composed of a mixture of IRA members and ex-Briitish servicemen. However, any such suggestion would be likely to have hands raised and the usual voices howling about 'concessions'.

At a personal level I will say I am republican in my outlook, as are my family, I simply do not believe the problem can be solved in the long term except via re-unification. At the same time, the period in which armed struggle was viable or worthwhile and had not degenerated into sectarian free-for-alls has passed us by.