Numbers up Gerry

bumper234 wrote: »

IRA 'lied to Government on decommissioning'


The Provisional IRA "pulled the wool" over British and Irish government eyes in its 2005 commitment that it had "put beyond use" all its store of the Semtex explosive, according to senior garda sources.


At the time, the senior IRA figure liaising with the Independent International Committee on Decommissioning (IICD) gave an assurance that all the IRA's Semtex "was put beyond use".

There's the important parts of that report.

First of all...consider the fact that you are reading the Independent.

Now tell me how the commission knew what the IRA had? Why would the IRA tell them about, or show them it all, if it intended to pass it on to somebody else.

Then tell me what idiot would give semtex and arms to a group who would have them court martialed and shot?

It was either stolen or the story is bull****.

Brains and the Independent should never be in any sentence but this one.

bumper234 wrote: »

Ah so because it didn't come from a source that you prefer then it must be lies?

The Independent is legendary for this kind of stuff. 'Unnamed Garda sources' etc etc.

The IRA knew what they had, if 200 guns and a couple of tons of semtex went missing they knew about it. More likely they CHOSE not to say they had lost a sh1t load of guns/explosives

Why, considering the stakes, would they do that?

or some quartermaster made a pile of money selling it on.

Rogue actions in an army are hard to guard against as the BA well knows. If it was sanctioned by the leadership, why in heavens name would they arm their enemies? Make sense please.

Edit: I can't find the story anywhere else...sure sign the Indo is bull****ting.

bumper234 wrote: »

Amazing that seeing as i found it on my first search....is RTE a good enough source for you?


http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0711/461949-weapons-seized/

And where is all the stuff about the IRA lying to the Commission, according to 'Senior Garda sources' and 'tonnes' of semtex and '200' guns?

The Commission itself is on record as saying that you can never be sure if all has been decommissioned but their assessment was that it was and that the people involved where reliable.

I know you are new here, let it be a lesson to avoid the Indo, if you are looking for honest journalism.

bumper234 wrote: »

Amazing that seeing as i found it on my first search....is RTE a good enough source for you?


http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0711/461949-weapons-seized/

...and who were they tracking when they found these arms? Dissidents, some of whom are probably former members of the PIRA who saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to take a few for themselves. The PIRA is defunct, gone, bye-byes.

bumper234 wrote: »

To save future confusion to us newbies maybe you can give me a list of credible news sources that the shinnerbots on here consider to be reliable:rolleyes:

Any agency that doesn't use catch all terms like 'Shinnerbot' and 'IRA' to encompass all and every republican organisation.
You'll get the hang of it with the application of some brains and common sense. It's not nice to be fooled by propaganda.

timthumbni wrote: »

Ad problact. That's it. And if you don't agree we will send the bhoys around. Lol

An Poblacht? I can safely say that I have never read a sentence of that in my 50 odd years of life.
Sometimes, (and it might be a skill you should acquire) you can judge a book/newspaper by it's cover.

This post has been deleted.

timthumbni wrote: »

Could always use it for bog roll afterwards I suppose.

They are always looking for contributions of more Unionist/ loyalist sh!te alright.

Sort of off topic.

The below quote really sums up my support for the Provisionals.

I have explained some of this support in a previous post in this thread. See here

Grief caused by the traumatic death of a loved one, especially at the hands of an unknown and irrational aggressor, lasts forever. No one ‘gets over’ such a loss; those who have lost a loved one merely become used to living with it. Grief, like everything else in life, is relative. The grief of losing a parent is hard, but can at least be understood. The psychological furniture in the dining room of the mind can, with time, be rearranged so that the parent is never really gone – just sitting in a different part of the room. The grief of losing a close relative in an accident is far harder to bear, but imagine being a child witnessing your father bleeding to death or your mother screaming in pain as she dies. Then imagine discovering that those responsible were not psychopaths, but those who were entrusted and paid to protect life and uphold the law. Imagine if, after thirty-five years of believing that your father was shot dead by a ‘cheese processor’, you discovered he was actually shot dead by a serving police officer and that this had been hidden from the court, and your family, by other, more senior, police officers. Imagine believing for thirty-five years that your mother had been killed by a telephone engineer only to find out that he was a serving member of a regiment of the British Army – and that this had also been kept from the court. Imagine learning in mid-life that the beautiful mother you adored, who had disappeared from your life before you were ten years old, could have been saved by the stroke of a policeman’s pen. Or that the father you barely knew – the tall, dark presence who was part of your daily life, and for whom your mother grieved so sorely – was first shot and then blown up by a gang including a police officer living down the road. Or that your unborn baby daughter was blown to pieces by a UDR man, before she could take her first breath. Then imagine how the mere knowledge of this puts you into an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ existence where you dare not speak your mind, fearing that blank eyes will return your gaze, evidence you are not believed (‘Sure, the grief has got to him’). Those left behind will always have agonising memories of the person they lost. Not a day goes by without them being remembered. The annual routine brings it all back: Christmas, birthdays, the date of the killing. Children who were toddlers at the time their parent was killed may have no clear memory of what he or she looked like and have to rely on fuzzy black-and-white photographs and family stories. Perhaps the family never speaks at all about the relative they loved and lost; it is simply too painful to put into words. Mothers sometimes decided, soon after their bereavement, not to speak of their children’s murdered father in case it made them bitter enough to become paramilitaries. Children, anxious not to cause their grieving parent even more pain, would keep silent – despite longing to speak about the father they never (or hardly) knew. Most of those who have been through this experience are bemused. At first they cannot believe what has happened. Then they become angry. The grief can turn from a familiar dull ache into fury. Then it deposits an unwelcome burden on their shoulders. The heavy burden of trying to find out the truth about what happened.

You had the RUC, the British Army, and several loyalist paramilitary groups all in collusion with each other; all involved in a sectarian campaign against Irish Catholics. The Provisionals were created to protect that half of the community, because the upholders of law and order were the ones killing them.

Do I regret, and criticize the Provisionals for getting dragged into a sectarian war? Of course. It was terrible. The same which is said above about the loss of loved ones can be said for the families who suffered on the other side. It's tragic. You cannot simply label the IRA as murdering scumbags and completely ignore who and what forces dragged them into a sectarian war. They tried to stay out of the sectarian side of it and to limit their attacks on British Army personnel, but as the RUC, the British Army and the unionist/loyalist paramilitaries killed more and more innocent Irish Catholics (of which I have a comprehensive list), and colluded together, it drew them into sectarianism. It's no wonder the Provisionals numbers increased during this time.

It's extremely important to note some other factors:
1. Lots of the guns used to kill innocent Catholics were British Army issued weapons which were shared amongst the groups already listed above. Some of the guns were used in 10+ murders. This is the definition of collusion.
2. As stated by the Barron report, The Dublin and Monaghan bombings were carried out in order to get the Irish Government on the side of the British, and to come down hard on the IRA.

After the bombings, very few politicians visited the families of the injured or the dead. There was no day of mourning as there had been with Bloody Sunday. There was no monument set up until 30 years after the fact (I think). The UVF claim responsibility for the bombings, and refuse to admit British Army help. Three days before the bombings the British government announced it's de-proscription on 14th May. Until 1990 it appeared the UVF had acted alone. Given how well constructed the bombs were, many experts believe the UVF incapable of creating them and carrying out such an effective attack.

The Barron Report also showed that the Irish Government had little interest in the bombings. When information was given to them suggesting the British authorities had intelligence naming the bombers it was not followed up on. One of The Barron Report's most startling findings was that the garda investigation was wound up in a matter of weeks. From early 1974 the British Government were determined to secure support of the Irish Government in its battle against the IRA. On May 13th, documents purporting to suggest an all-out offensive by the IRA on the protestant community were presented by the British Government to the Taoiseach. The Brits were suggesting imminent republican violence, while at the same time ignoring advance intelligence on the threat posted by The UWC whose strike began two days later. In the wake of the bombings on 17th of May, the British Ambassador reported back to the foreign office on the mood in Dublin, remarking that the reactions from the Irish government and people, from a British viewpoint, were 'healthy and helpful', adding 'There is now a much keener realisation of the Republic's vulnerability to acts of terrorism spilling over from the North and recognition of the direct connection between this and continued violence by the PIRA.' He also warned against rubbing it in, and that this should help co-operation from the Irish. Statements given by the Irish government at the time were not to find out who was responsible for the Dublin/Monaghan bombings, but rather defeating the IRA. The Irish government were afraid to commit any action which would exacerbate the situation.

To label the IRA as evil murdering scumbags and ignore the collusion which ultimately drew them into a planned sectarian war in order to get public opinion swayed against them is to completely misunderstand the historical facts.