GERRY'S FIERCE FRIENDS (IRA)

New York Post | 5/06/02

[kattracks]

May 6, 2002 --

New evidence emerged last week that Gerry Adams' Provisional IRA is training terrorists around the world - including Colombia's FARC and Palestinian bomb-makers.

Palestinian booby trap bombs found in Jenin were exact replicas of devices used by the IRA in Northern Ireland, according to a explosives-disposal expert working in the West Bank with the Norwegian Red Cross.

At the same time, a report published by Congress indicates that up to 15 members of the Provisional IRA have been involved in training FARC's drug-running terrorists.

The IRA trainers in Colombia also advised Iranians, Cubans and possibly Basque operatives.

Three senior IRA operatives were caught by Colombian security forces last year as they left FARC-controlled territory bearing false passports.

The deadly effects of the Provos' collaboration with the FARC were confirmed last Wednesday in dramatic testimony to the House International Relations Committee by Colombian Chief of General Staff Gen. Fernando Tapias.

He pointed out that FARC is now using IRA-style mortars, booby traps and car bombs. They've learned an IRA tactic, too: setting off one bomb to attract security forces, and then a second, larger one to ravage the emergency-services providers arriving on the scene.

Committee Chairman Henry Hyde asked Sinn Fein head Gerry Adams to testify and give his side of the story. Adams refused. (He also snubbed the Irish parliament when it wanted to question him on the same issue.)

All of this adds to indications that the IRA's terrorist machinery is an active part of a global terrorist network.

It is true that in the last six months there have been two long-delayed instances of the IRA "decommissioning" (mostly obsolete) weapons as promised in the Good Friday agreement.

But the IRA has also been buying modern Russian-made assault rifles to replace those weapons, and a "hit list" of British politicians and other terrorist targets was discovered early in April by police in Northern Ireland.

With the IRA training terrorists in the Americas and the Middle East, while it seemingly prepares for more armed activity in Northern Ireland itself, it's now time for Washington to add the group to its list of proscribed organizations.

[backhoe]

Cross-linking:

The Web of Terror

[Conservative Chicagoan]

I think given Blair being a communist that we need to tell Great Britain quite plainly that they need to defeat the IRA or we will consider them incompetent and then go ahead and do so ourselves.