Two soldiers killed, IRA claiming responsibility

[Flagg]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7931774.stm

Im sure a few of you may have heard the news on the two young british soldiers shot in Northern Ireland. Apparantly they were in desert fatigues as they were being deployed to Afghanastan the next day. The Real IRA are allegedly claiming responsibility for this. First soldiers to be killed over there in over a decade.

[Matt]

A terrible thing, lets hope we dont see things go back to the way they were over there...

[Flagg]

A terrible thing, lets hope we dont see things go back to the way they were over there...

Well in a macabre way, Sept. 11th effectively ended terrorist attacks in the UK. I don't know what stunt the IRA are trynna pull with this one. I assume they aren't funded by the CIA anymore.

[Flagg]

Not content with two dead soldiers, those stupid bastards shot a policeman dead today..

[BuffedGuy]

Not content with two dead soldiers, those stupid bastards shot a policeman dead today..

All true and sad, but the question is as eliteforce put it: are there unresolved issues, wrongs that need to be righted, etc? I know very little about the situation so I am asking.

[Flagg]

Okay, the group that killed the two soldiers claimed to be The Real IRA and the ones that killed the copper were apparantly The Continuity IRA...both are splinter groups of the former IRA, and I do stress that because the IRA does not exist anymore.

Basically, N.Ireland is considered a part of Britain rather than a part of Ireland. Before you had Nationalists who were mainly Catholics and Unionists who were Protestants. The Nationalists want to N.Ireland to be reunited with the rest of Ireland, the Prods want N.Ireland to remain a part of Britain. Cue lots of violence over flags, territory, religion and patriotism and Britain having to deploy troops over there to defend the rights of the Prods, who were as a population in the minority.

In 2005 the IRA declared an end to its campaign and decomissioned most of its weapons.

Anyway, it's a damn shame that something like this had to happen and disrupt all the work that has been put into the peace process. It has taken a lot of work on behalf of Tony Blair and other governments to make the latest generation relativley un-bitter to past decades of violence in order to ensure peace. Neither Loyalists nor Republicans want to see soldiers back heavily patrolling the streets. These extremists do, because they want more targets, and more chances to disrupt the peace. Hopefully both sides will be able to shrug these series of events off as a bump in the road and move on.

Part of the so called "provocation" of these attacks was apparantly due to someone leaking information out that MI5 and the SAS were working closely in getting rid of the last few remaining hard core nutjobs. Still it's deplorable that a few of these nutcases don't know anything else other than violence and use this as an excuse.

There are more Catholics today than previously in N.Ireland and efforts are being made to have a combined government in N.Ireland consisting of both Catholics and Protestants. Eventually I would like to see a united Ireland. Prehaps in 20 years time, barring no more violence, when the majority of the population in N.Ireland are not dominated by Unionists and is a mixture of Unionists, loyalists, those apathetic and more people that havent grown up in a warzone, then prehaps something can happen. Britain claims it will support whatever outcome occurs.

[eliteforce]

Did the "good friday" peace agreement really address any of the issues that the IRA was fighting for in the first place? No united Ireland, no end to British military presence, a paralyzed northern Ireland government that never really did anything, Catholic and Protestant communities separated from each other by fences and walls..

I mean the fact that British soldiers are still there says something about the unresolved situation..

the whole thing seemed to simply perpetuate the situation that pre-existed.. how is the situation really resolved? .. Should Dublin be involved in the territory instead of London?