To Guest Aldus - I can only say - VERY WELL SAID!!!! I agree with you entirely

To others I would say this:

To Guest melodymaker - The "...terrorising innocent Irish folk" was not done by Margaret Thatcher. Northern Ireland has been terrorised by small, entirely unrepresentative and wholely self-appointed groups who got the measure of the support they actually had from the Irish people in the all Ireland part of the referendum on the "Good Friday Agreement" (i.e. where about 90% of the voters told 'em to pack it in for good and all). The response to this was the Omagh Bomb - As I have said before, if any of them ever carried out the indiscriminate bombings killings and punishment beatings and then tried to tell me they were doing so to "protect" me - I'd tell 'em to bugger off and "protect" somebody else.

To Fion - Go ask the people who live in the Falklands under whose protection they would rather live. After all it is their lives and liberty that are at stake - not some lump of real estate. If your statement regarding the British being the foreigners in the Falklands is ever allowed by way of precedent - then there's quite a few Mudcatters around the globe had better start booking tickets home to the old country.

In a previous thread on Mudcat it was fairly well established that Mrs Thatcher did not start the Falklands War - That point was actually conceded in that thread by some of her more vociferous detractors when confronted by the facts very well put by others.

The post by Ringer quite rightly corrects you in that the "Rejoice, Rejoice" remark was made on the announcement that Port Stanley had fallen and that hostilities were at an end.

By the by, does anywhere in the UK hold a celebration of a Falklands Victory Day?? I don't think so. But in Argentina their military do celebrate the sinking of the Sheffield, Coventry and Atlantic Conveyor. We do not celebrate the sinking of the Belgrano.

Another point very well expressed by Terry K alluded to the state of the country before Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister - Again I have previously asked her detractors to tell us how wonderfull it all was? - To date no takers, because the country was in a complete and utter mess and the electorate of the UK were given the opportunity to vote and they did - whether you happened to like the result or not.

But with all threads associated with this lady, I am always amazed at the degree of tunnel visioned bigotry and the almost complete ignorance of, and unwillingness to acknowledge, the facts.

I am not advocating, nor ever had, that she always got it right - but then who ever does?