Should Britain be part of America's "axis of evil?"

[pogo]

Guys - this thread is not about the Dublin Monaghan bombings, so stay on topic, or log off please.

Cheers

The topic is British State Terrorism, is it not? I'd have thought Dublin-Monaghan was one of the more obvious instances of the same.

Meri - your tired "few bad apples" excuse has been trotted out for the last 40 years. Every time the Brits were caught funding, arming, training, providing intelligence, providing military escorts in and out of hits, providing political cover for Loyalist terrorists, every single feckin time, we heard the same old guff.

A "few bad apples" and "rogue agents" somehow managed to follow exactly the same policies over 40 years at immense cost in money and material resulting in over 1000 deaths of your fellow Irish citizens - innocent civilians all - with British Ministers repeatedly making weasely speeches denying it was happening, excusing them, or pointing the killers in particular new directions - and the perpetrators within the RUC, UDR and BA repeatedly being exonerated and promoted after being exposed - and all you can do is stand there and wring your hands helplessly and wibble about "a few bad apples". There is no way a consistent and highly-visible policy could have been implemented in such a fashion over such a lengthy period of time, at such cost, involving successive generations of British military and intelligence personnel, without official approval and sanction.

Either the Kitsonian policies followed in the north were approved at high level, or the British State is a fundamentally corrupt, bloodthirsty, unaccountable, shambolic, dysfunctional, murderous anti-democratic mess. You really can't logically have it any other way. A "few bad apples" indeed

And some people say my views don't make sense!

Cut the Bullsh1t now Sidey and debate like a grown-up.
Im not going to be intimidated with hyperbole or dismissals of my arguments with nonsense, or indeed if you are going to try to imply that Im excusing the outrages.
Im not. Im wondering about the precise culpability, and havent been convinced yet that it extends as far as some here state it does.
So dont mention 'wibbling' or 'your fellow Irish citizens' bull to me again, because Ive been around here longer than that.

Meri, you are one of the few well-balanced posters on this subject.

Anyone who seriously doubts Sidewinder is anything other than a loon and an imbecile need only look here, at Sidewinders ridiculous attempts to 'prove' that Eddie Fullerton was a victim of collusion, in which he was able to demonstrate little more than the fact that he is not quite right in the head.

Sidewinder is forever making absurd and hyperbolic claims: for example that Northern Ireland is by far the poorest region in Western Europe, that no-one has died in India of famine since the British left and that Ireland was the only European nation to have suffered from famine in the nineteenth century, which the smallest amount of research can easily disprove.

I have little doubt that some low level collusion did occur, however to portray the loyalist terrorist groups as arms of the British state is gross Sidewinderian hyperbole.

These groups killed a thousand people in 30 years, the vast majority of them (around 90%) being random, pointless killings, generally the sectarian murder of inoffensive Catholics. The state had no interest whatsoever in such killing, which merely added fire to the flames of a conflict which they would much rather see resolved.

And if loyalists were content merely to kill Catholics at random, they hardly needed the assistance of the British security services to do so.

Only about 50 of the killings were of Republican paramilitaries, targets the security services would actually want to see killed.

Surely organisations directly financed, trained and directed by the British state would have achieved far more than this in 30 years of trying.

It is also worth noting that during these supposed years of terror, the loyalists never managed to kill the leadership of SF/IRA, something they would surely have been able to do had the British government genuinely wanted to use them to destroy the Republican movement.

[merle haggard]

Y'see, there's a small distinction.
When we say the 'state', for instance, there is no evidence whatsoever that the orders for the Loyalist death squads came from the highest echelons of the British state. Special Branch are low ranking echelons.

Now contrast this with Iranian policy regarding funding or foreign extremists.

Colonel Gordon Kerr answered directly to number 10 and the highest echelons of military intelligence . He was promoted for his terrorist activities afterwards and remains a very high ranking diplomatic and military official today . He is Britains key player in the democratisation of Iraq and effectively number 2 in their military intelligence apparatus . Brian Nelson , who directed the loyalist killer gangs to their overwhelmingly innocent targets , answered directly to his unit which he ran hands on . The importation of massive arms shipments to the loyalist organisations was done by his group as well , through Nelson and other agents . When Nelson was jailed Kerr gave him a character reference in court and praised his work . His work was ensuring senior British agents within the provisionals were not targetted and that the catholic population was terrorised into submission .

your little more than an apologist for terrorism

[pogo]

The British Army funded, trained, armed and directed Loyalist terrorists. This has been comprehensively proven,

No, it hasn't.

[quoteey1pna0]and only the wilfully blind refuse to acknowledge what has been proven in report after report after report - by the British themselves FFS!

Link to such a report then.

The BA were seen many many other occasions escorting Loyalist killers. Leading Loyalists were forever seen in the company of senior BA and RUC personnel.

You told us about this. Here.

Throughout the conflict, the names and pictures of every single leading Loyalist were well known. They were in the newspapers every Sunday. But nothing was done about them.

On the contrary, a great many were arrested and imprisoned.

Because the upper ranks of every Loyalist organisation were agents of British Military Intelligence.

Robin Jackson
Billy Wright
John McMichael
William Stobie
Mark Haddock
Mark Fulton
Torrens Knight
Billy Hanna
Robert McConnell

As there were in Republican organisations.

You don't believe British intelligence should attempt to infiltrate terrorist groups, then?

Didn't know Billy Wright was a British agent.

"Kevin Fulton" and "Martin Ingram" and others were British Military Agents.

Martin Ingram was a British agent.

That was his job.

Wasn't aware of his being a loyalist paramilitary, however.

There is an effort currently underway to let the RUC Special Branch take the rap for the State-sponsored mass-murder campaign, but the evidence is quite clear. The British State, in the form of the FRU, Det 14 and all the other codenames they gave themselves, were the ones directing the slaughter.

[/quoteey1pna0]

Why would the British state want a slaughter?

Aren't things far better now, with no deployment of troops and little cost to the British exchequer?

[merle haggard]

[quote="pogo"]

Why would the British state want a slaughter?

And things far better now, with no deployment of troops and little cost to the British exchequer?

youve answered your own question

[meriwether]

Y'see, there's a small distinction.
When we say the 'state', for instance, there is no evidence whatsoever that the orders for the Loyalist death squads came from the highest echelons of the British state. Special Branch are low ranking echelons.

Now contrast this with Iranian policy regarding funding or foreign extremists.

Colonel Gordon Kerr answered directly to number 10 and the highest echelons of military intelligence . He was promoted for his terrorist activities afterwards and remains a very high ranking diplomatic and military official today . He is Britains key player in the democratisation of Iraq and effectively number 2 in their military intelligence apparatus . Brian Nelson , who directed the loyalist killer gangs to their overwhelmingly innocent targets , answered directly to his unit which he ran hands on . The importation of massive arms shipments to the loyalist organisations was done by his group as well , through Nelson and other agents . When Nelson was jailed Kerr gave him a character reference in court and praised his work . His work was ensuring senior British agents within the provisionals were not targetted and that the catholic population was terrorised into submission .

your little more than an apologist for terrorism

And you are little more than an extremist Republican lunatic.
An entertaining lunatic, but a lunatic nonetheless.
I thought I had made it clear I wasn't excusing these murders- I was merely unconvinced at precisely how far up the collusion (see? Im stating it did happen) went.
But your lunacy blinds you to what in my eyes is a reasonable enough request- proof of these claims.
Sidewinder makes some interesting points, while you have just stumbled onto a keyboard after an afternoon of Guinness and listening to the 'Tones.