Terrorism makes for strange bed bugs

According to the IrishCentral news site, Libya's Gaddafi to pay billions for IRA atrocities

Say what, thought Guambat? Gaddafi funded the bombing of that plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, but what's that got to do with the right wingnut Irish?

Well, this is the story (from a year ago) below the headline:

Colonel Gaddafi is to pay $3.5 billion to victims of IRA atrocities it has been revealed.

Gaddafi allowed the importation from Libya in the 1980s of tons of semtex plastic explosives to be used in IRA attacks.

Among the attacks carried out with Libyan semtex were the Harrods Christmas bombing of 1983, which killed six and the Enniskillen atrocity of 1987 that left 11 dead during a Remembrance Day service.

It was also used by the Real IRA splinter group in the Omagh bombing in August 1998, which killed 29 and injured 220 in the worst killings of the Troubles.

And Libyan semtex was also used in the 1989 Lockerbie Pan Am 103 airline bombing that left 270 dead.

The IRA don't colour beer green; they coloured it red.

IRA Atrocities

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) is an Irish republican paramilitary group - and proscribed Terrorist organization - whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a United Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion.

This "force of arms" involved violence and murder against civilians - Catholic and Protestant - and members of the British Armed Forces. In all, 1,800 people were murdered by the IRA during the so-called "Troubles".

Thus, Guambat was moved from cynicism to dismay to read the following.

It takes a terrorist: Former IRA supporter to chair hearings on U.S. Muslims

In 1985, the Irish government boycotted the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City, the biggest celebration in the Irish-American calendar. The cause of its umbrage was Peter King, that year's grand marshal and someone the Irish government said was an "avowed" supporter of a terrorist organization, the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

King, then a local politician on Long Island, was one of the most zealous American defenders of the militant IRA and its campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland. He described the IRA, which mastered the car bomb as an instrument of urban terror, as a "legitimate force."

And he compared Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, to George Washington.

But King sees no parallel between the IRA and violent Islamist extremism, which he describes as a foreign enemy or a foreign-directed enemy. His preferred comparison for the IRA is with the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela; the IRA, no less than the ANC's military wing, was fighting for community rights and freedom, he says.

"I felt that the IRA, in the context of Irish history, and Sinn Fein were a legitimate force that had to be recognized and you wouldn't have peace without them," King said. "Listen, I think I'm one of the people who brought about peace in Ireland."

"If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it," King said in 1985.

King also clashed with prominent Irish-Americans who condemned IRA violence. He dismissed the Friends of Ireland caucus in Congress, which included Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Edward Kennedy, as infused with a "moral arrogance and self-righteousness that would do justice to the royal family."

A quarter-century later, the New York Republican is chairman of the powerful House Homeland Security Committee.

So what's the hubbub, Guambat?

Rally hits Congress’s focus on Muslims, terror

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter King, has said that affiliates of Al Qaeda are radicalizing some American Muslims. King plans hearings starting Thursday on the threat he says they pose.

King, a Republican from Long Island, told CNN’s “State of the Union" yesterday that he sees an international movement with elements in the United States of Muslims becoming more radical and identifying with terrorists.

“I don’t believe there is sufficient cooperation" by American Muslims with law enforcement, King said. “Certainly my dealings with the police in New York and FBI and others say they do not believe they get the same — they do not give the level of cooperation that they need."

This is how an adult addresses the issue: Talking terrorism

Guambat is hopelessly confused:

just who is the terrorist? (See this)