It is interesting that MtheGM likens the IRA to the Taliban. The only other person I ever heard make this comparison was is a firebrand Protestant Ulsterman called Norman Baxter who went out to take on the Taliban.

It was also Baxter who urged the PSNI to launch this investigation into the Sinn Fein leader's alleged role in the 1972 abduction and killing of Jean McConville, He appears to have been the first figure of any note – certainly the first with a media presence and extensive police connections – to call publicly for action to subpoena video tapes held by Boston College, Massachusetts, in which two ex-IRA members claim that Adams, as a senior IRA commander in Belfast, and had ordered the killing of Mrs. McConville. I recall he once roared " This poor woman may have heard herself condemned from the lips of demon of death himself". He urged Mrs. McConville's family to try instead, or as well, to bring civil proceedings – where the standard of proof is less daunting than in a criminal case which they are currently considering.

Baxter, a well known outspoken former Detective Chief Superintendent in the RUC used to preach from the pulpit that the British were bending over backwards to appease these no good pro-peace process republicans and that as a result IRA victims would end up being denied justice. The fact that 71% of the people of Ireland wanted the Good Friday Agreement went over his head.

Baxter said the Royal Ulster Constabulary, once the world's most effective anti-terrorist force who got the job. He was very outspoken about the new 50 -50 recruitment of the PSNI and shared government Assembly. He took his redundancy as he couldn't take any more of it and signed up with a private firm of security consultants "New Century", founded and led by Belfast-born Tim Collins, a commander in the Royal Irish Rangers who became a star of the British tabloid press in 2003 for a stirring speech he is said to have delivered to troops in Kuwait on the eve of their advance into Iraq.
(The only record comes from an embedded Daily Mail reporter who claims that she took verbatim notes of the desert oration.)

Baxter brought a contingent of his followers with him, former RUC officers, as well as ex Ulster Defence Regiment soldiers with experience in covert operations in the North. More than half of them came home as soon as the Taliban shot one of their men dead.


The level of hatred – it is not too strong a word – of Baxter and many of his former colleagues at the new status of individuals in the North of Ireland who hold office is unconcealed, he said . "Sinn Fein and the IRA have a record of human rights abuse that would equal some Nazi units in the Second World War, and yet they currently wear the duplicitous clothes of human rights defenders with such ease."

The pursuit of Adams and others must be seen by Baxter and his colleagues as unfinished business. As I said, I am no lover of Sinn Fein, but maybe there is something in what they say about "old hands pulling new strings".