""Your defending the Loyalists right to keep weapons while insisting the Republicans decommission theirs is proof of your bigotry.""

There is a huge difference, Mick, between defending the right of anyone to keep arms, and expressing approval of someone who, having arms, decides under extreme and deliberate provocation NOT TO USE THEM!

I don't think anyone here is advocating that loyalists be armed (rather the reverse), but, whether rightly or wrongly, they are. This is a separate issue from the fact that, after an attack, they DID allow the properly constituted authorities to deal with the matter according to law, thereby thwarting the intentions of the dissidents, and PRESERVING the peace.

Tell me Mick, how does what I have just said make me a hypocrite, a loyalist partisan, a bigot, or any of the other unpleasant names you attribute to those who disagree with your long distance expertise in Irish affairs.

Don T.