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Loyalist Threat to Dublin ?
The News of the World carried a story on its front page (of the Northern Ireland edition anyway) today that loyalists had threatened an attack on the Dail, the Republic's House of Commons. The Dail was said to be among targets that included Shannon Airport and oil depots around Dublin. Michael Stone is said to have claimed that loyalist terrorists would still see such targets as legitimate.
None of the other papers I could see had the story, not even the Sunday Life (and we know how much they love a bit of sensationalism), so I've no idea how reputable it was, but that's not the point I wish to make.
What worries me is that I'm not overly surprised (except maybe at how long it's been in coming). The government have been consistently rewarding IRA terrorism for 10 years. With terrorist causes, be they of the IRA, PLO, Al Qaeda or whoever, attracting sentiment ranging from 'understanding' to sympathy from brain-dead hopeless do-gooders worldwide, is it any wonder that loyalist elements pre-disposed to terrorist attacks are thinking along these lines?
No doubt if something were to happen the first people to have the Sinn Fein oh so high and mighty finger pointed at them would be Unionist politicians. This would have nothing to do with the Unionist politicians' abilities to influence the terrorists (we've seen for nearly 2 decades now that they can't). But that won't stop Sinn Fein trying to make political capital out of it.
But who should we really blame? How about the UK government and the Republic's government? How about Sinn Fein and the IRA? They've been demonstrating for a decade now what rewards terrorists can expect to get for their deeds and it's not a lengthy prison sentence. It's government posts, fat public salaries, paid at the expense of the public and the government you've been bombing and shooting at for years, and trips all over the world to raise yet more money for 'the cause'.
This is why we've been begging the governments for so long not to reward terrorists, because when you reward one explosive-weilding maniac, you can't be surprised when half a dozen more emerge from the woodwork looking for similar treatment.