Valid point Mick, heard these guys sounding off with a drop of the juice in them probably a lot more than you. They give me the shits. Laughed there when I read about him boasting about the helicopter, the PIRA never dropped one ! heard an asshole tell a similar story. To be honest Mick as your probably very well aware, the guys in the thick of it rarely speak about it. I have many very close friends who served long sentences and I can't remember the last time we had a political conversation, let along them boasting, which none ever did.

I saw a soldier shot, guy about 18. took a long time to die, called out for his mother the whole time. Saw young men I went to school with lying in coffins shot dead by British soldiers and closer to home in my own family. It is all terrible. When someone is killed in this way a lot more than them die, I watched mothers and fathers die a little each day because their will to live was lost.

Many rarely see this side of it, 26 years working in a hospital does kind of harden you a little. I know I get the crap knocked out of me here sometimes as if I came on to defend murder, I don't. I understood our cause and accepted in any campaign there will be losses on both sides, but I can never accept a legal government force calling us murders when their's in justified because laws protect them. I always tell everyone, the difference is, the so called terrorists are the ones with the small bombs !

We are well away from those days now, if only we can get the extreme loyalist political parties to accept this we can begin to build a country and let the people speak. Sinn Fein has never had a stronger voice, I never thought I would see the day the S.D.LP. got whitewashed by them in an election.

Now I do support Sinn Fein but have a few issues with them like many have with their own political parties.

My hope and wish for the future Mick is simple. Peace, no more killing and unity of the land I love.

Divis.