Who thinks IRA still has no guns?
If you believe that, then you will believe anything.
Does anyone seriously imagine they didn't hold back some of their best quality stock some home-made explosives may actually have been made to be destroyed.
The security services believe the amount destroyed corresponded to their estimates of the IRA's 'firepower'.
But how do they know?
They have refused to tell Ian Paisley whether it was their lowest or highest estimate, what those estimates were, and how big was the gap between them?
The British security services report what the government wants to hear. Take Iraq, where they were disastrously and tragically wrong about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
They can also be wrong about weapons still existing in Ireland.
Even if the IRA did destroy a large amount (for purely strategic reasons), they can simply use their vast criminal wealth to buy more as gun prices have fallen greatly since the sale of the huge eastern bloc arsenals.
There is no talk of the IRA disbanding, of course. The IRA cannot disband any more than the Mafia or Triads, both originally nationalist organisations, or the Russian mafia since, like the IRA, they are a major international criminal cartel and, as such, must have guns.
And it is from this criminality that Sinn Féin/IRA's great wealth of political funds derives. Those used to big money won't go back to labouring and social security.
Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin can't talk to the IRA because he and they are the IRA (perhaps they should talk to themselves).
The IRA only waits for an opportune time however long it takes to recommence the 'armed struggle'. If you do not know that, you do not know them.
So there will be no peace in Ireland stemming from this evil mendacity. To presume otherwise is building on sand.
Victoria Townley
High Road
Wood Green
London N22
