"PLEASE don't start FKWT off on his personal re-interpretation of Irish history"
No intention whatever of doings so Greg - my hearing is far to precarious nowadays to be able to put up with yet another display of his Lambeg drumming.
He has displayed his spectacular ignorance of Irish history enough times in the past to make that particular exercise unnecessary, and his latest offering is more than adequate proof of his partisan approach to the subject.
I raised it to point out the consequences of Terry the Trooper's brutish suggestion of "kill them all and take no prisoners men" - classic comic-book soldiering.
I agree with Richard that there is no alternative to doing what is in the process of being done at the moment, but the idea of deliberately slaughtering them all, makes anybody who would carry out or even suggest such a thing no better than the extremists and it would have the Hydra effect I suggested it would - cut of one head and another would grow.
These people are not an army, they are a dangerous idea - you don't kill them or suppress them out of existence - you make them unsustainable and unnecessary to people they are influencing and oppressing.
Create martyrs en-masse, especially where religion is concerned, and you guarantee that it will survive and spread to fight another day.
God save us all from military half-wits, especially anonymous wannabe ones, crouched behind keyboards in the comfort and safety of their own homes or holding forth at the bar around throwing-out time - peacetime Dad's Armiers all.
Jim Carroll