If the Irish hadn't existed, they would have had to be invented.

Guest, I feel sorry for you. You apparently can't let go of hate anymore than some of Provos and Unionists can. But if you want to look at "30 years of Murder and death," you might also want to look at the 800 preceeding years. I suggest that you look especially hard at the middle of the 17th Century.... Or look up the Penal Laws. Or go to West Cork and visit the Famine pits in the graveyards. Or ask yourself why artillery was used in Dublin in 1916 when tear gas was available. Or look into the Black and Tans.

What I find amazing is that the Irish -- and I have relatives by marriage in Cork, Dingle, and Dublin and have met many more on numerous trips there -- are not more vengeful. These days the bulk of them seem to want to see the Good Friday Accords work.

Guest, you are anonymous, which makes me suspect a certain lack of courage. I suspect, though, that you are from the UK. Without meaning any offense, I must point out that England's government was responsible not only for making a mess of governing Ireland, but for such other events as the Highland Clearances, the removal of the Acadians, giving smallpox-infected blankets to the American Indians, shooting down protesting Indian Indians....

Guest, you also make the mistake of assuming that the troubles in Northern Ireland are the fault of the Irish. They aren't, unless Northern Ireland is no longer part of the United Kingdom....

What have the Irish ever done for us? Others have been eloguent on the subject. As far as I'm concerned -- there's my wife....

As the Aleut story tellers say, "That is all."