OUR terrorists

The leftwing Independent's view of history is reminiscent of Pravda's liberal view of truth. It's the eye of the beholder. Or, in this case, the media outlet. In a story about three IRA terrorists who have been in hiding after conviction in Columbia for training Marxist terrorists, the Independent has their own version of history.

They are "Irish republicans," the Marxist terrorists are "Farc rebels," they were originally acquitted of the "major charge against them, that of training the Farc rebels. "

REALITY
The reality is there if you look for it. A brief summary: The three IRA terrorists were charged with training the FARC terrorists "to make and deploy IRA-style weaponry, including truck-mounted mortars." And gas cylinder bombs. They had traveled to Columbia with false passports. One of the three IRA terrorists had been based in Cuba for several years. He was, in fact, the official IRA representative in Cuba (see below,) although ABC-news, that should know a terrorist when they see one, conveniently missed that part, substituting instead, "It had been thought they were hiding in Cuba or Venezuela." CNN adopted the same verbiage, again, without supplying the fact that Niall Connolly had lived in Cuba for eight years as the official IRA representative or that Venezuela under the Marxist Chavez has allowed free use of the borders for the Marxist FARC to move in and out of Columbia.

ACCUSED of IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY MEMBERSHIP
Reuters, on the other hand, doubted they were members of the IRA even while admitting the FARC group was Marxist.

Three Irish fugitives accused of Irish Republican Army membership and convicted by a Colombian court of teaching Marxist rebels how to make bombs resurfaced in Ireland on Friday, triggering a political storm.

That's odd, when you consider Reuters isn't sure about their membership in the IRA a full three years after the BBC acknowledged them to be more than just members of the IRA. The BBC:

Their mood worsened when it emerged that the three men did indeed have republican links. James Monaghan had escaped explosives charges in the 1970s but had resurfaced in the 1980s as a member of the Sinn Fein executive.
Niall Connolly was described as Sinn Fein's Spanish-speaking Cuba representative. Martin McCauley had been a party worker.

So, Reuters lied outright about them being members of the IRA. How about being terrorists? Ann Applebaum of the Washington Post has no illusions that the IRA are terrorists. It was a distinction that Tony Blair could not make in his news conference (rebroadcast on C-SPAN). Small wonder when you consider that the dealmaking between the IRA and Tony Blair is still in progress as lists of "The Forgiven" have grown to 55. It's a question that even a Guardian article could not answer: "how can terrorism be utterly and unforgivably wrong in one case, but tolerable and negotiable in another? Why is murderous Islamic militancy so different from murderous Irish republicanism?"

Following the attack in New York, Blair could have taken the opportunity to crush the IRA by branding it as a fascist terrorist movement essentially indistinguishable from al-Qaeda, but he had already locked himself into a position of negotiating with another group of terrorists. Last week he again showed that this position is at once intellectually absurd, historically ignorant, and morally shameful.

He said by way of extenuating the IRA that he could not imagine them killing 3,000 people. That is not merely a dubious argument: as so often with Blair, it is based on premises which are simply false. If the IRA did not kill many more innocents it was not for want of trying. Long before Osama bin Laden had set up shop, the IRA were blowing up pubs and hotels and then moved to office blocks and what they called big-city 'spectaculars'. Their bombs in the City of London caused hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of damage, and might easily have taken thousands of lives.

Any suggestion that the IRA's killing was somehow restrained is grotesquely insulting and painful to those who have been bereaved by vile bombings in Enniskillen or Belfast, London or Birmingham, but the claim is wrong in any case. In proportion to the respective populations of Northern Ireland and the US, the numbers killed by the Provisional IRA are equivalent to 330,000 Americans. Would Blair have dismissed that as a trivial figure?

The article was in response to a news conference reported by the BBC. The Mirror shares Tony Blair's contention that "The IRA and al-Qaeda are entirely different kinds of terrorism." One, as Blair noted in yesterday's news conference, you can negotiate with. Really????

OUR TERRORISTS AND YOUR TERRORISTS
It's a distinction that actually impairs the fight against terrorism, says Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar.

Referring to the infighting in Ireland between the pro-Catholic Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Protestant British, Syed Hamid said the terrorist attacks by the IRA were just referred to as IRA attacks and not connected to the religion involved.

"The same treatment should also be given to the Muslims, and this would give the moderate Muslims greater strength to fight terrorism," he told reporters on the sidelines of the one-day Asean Regional Forum (ARF), here.

Perhaps that is the reason the U.S. is considering changing the name of the War on Terrorism to the War against Extremism. Maybe, though, we should rename it a War against Leftwing Politics that Use Terrorism as their Weapon of Mass Destruction. That way we can include the Democrat Party and their links to the Black Panthers that even now share the political spoils in Oakland, CA. Or the American domestic Panther connection to radical Islam. Or the tolerance of the Socialists in Spain for ETA and Mitterand's apeasement endorsement of terrorism when he pardoned 31 known terrorists, lifted a ban on terrorists publications, and quickly abolished the State Security Court that had set up to deal with terrorism. Then we can include the MSM who forged those links and protect the story. And the universities and colleges that now employ em.