Shackled at Shannon: the hollow assurances

FOREIGN Minister Dermot Ahern has been forced to admit, thanks to the vigilance of service staff, that at least one shackled prisoner has been brought through Shannon by the US military without Government permission.

The US military was caught this time not by the gardaí or the State, but by a vigilant worker. This begs the question: if the US was willing to ignore the Government this time, how many times has it happened before?

Dermot Ahern has asked us repeatedly to trust in hollow assurances from the Bush administration with regard to US military and CIA activity at Shannon.

Once again, these assurances and the purported ‘goodwill’ of the US military have been shown to be worthless. Why should anybody trust the Bush administration or the Irish Government after this? It seems very likely that US policy is to leave the Government out of the loop, so that Dermot Ahern can ‘honestly’ claim to know nothing when incidents such as this occur.

The truth remains, however, that this Fianna Fáil/PD Government is fully complicit in facilitating the US war machine at Shannon and is directly assisting imperial wars in the Middle East.

Fintan Lane

Palmers Glade

Palmerstown

Dublin 20