Real IRA was behind army attack

[Beneath the Shadows]

'Real IRA was behind army attack'

A Dublin-based newspaper has received a call supposedly from the Real IRA which claimed responsibility for the attack at Massereene army base.

Using a recognised codename, it claimed responsibility for the attack in which two soldiers were killed.

Four other people, including two pizza delivery men, were also injured when gunmen struck at the Antrim base.

The prime minister described the attack as "evil" and said "no murderer" would derail the peace process.

The soldiers are the first to be murdered in Northern Ireland since Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick was killed by an IRA sniper in 1997.

The dead men, both in their early 20s were due to fly to Afghanistan in the coming days.

Flowers have been laid at the scene and a vigil was held nearby on Sunday.

The Real IRA was born out of a split in the mainstream Provisional IRA in October 1997, when the IRA's so-called quartermaster-general resigned over Sinn Fein's direction in the peace process.

It carried out the worst single atrocity of over 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland when it bombed the County Tyrone town of Omagh, killing 29 people, in August 1998.

The chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland has said he does not believe the attack at Massereene was a response to him deploying special forces soldiers.

Sir Hugh Orde had asked for help to gather intelligence on dissident activity.

Northern Ireland's top police officer also said he had no plans to deploy additional military personnel.

"The police deliver policing in Northern Ireland, and that is exactly how it is going to stay," he said.

Gordon Brown told the BBC: "I think the whole country is shocked and outraged at the evil and cowardly attacks on soldiers serving their country.

"We will do everything in our power to make sure that Northern Ireland is safe and secure and I assure you we will bring these murderers to justice.

"No murderer will be able to derail a peace process that has the support of the great majority of Northern Ireland."

All four injured men are being treated at Antrim Area Hospital, about a mile away from the scene.

Of those who were injured, three are in a serious condition and another is said to be serious but stable.

Pizza

Chief superintendent Derek Williamson said at about 2120 GMT on Saturday night a pizza delivery service sent two delivery men to the Antrim barracks. As they arrived, shots began to be fired from a car.

He said the pizza delivery men were an innocent party and both were among those injured.

After two gunmen with automatic rifles fired an initial volley of shots, which left those under attack lying on the ground, they moved forward and opened fire again.

He said: "There's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this was an attempt at mass murder."

The area surrounding the barracks, which is home to 38 Engineer Regiment, has been sealed off.

The delivery drivers bullet-riddled cars are still at the scene.

Police are examining a car in Randalstown, five miles from the army base, which they suspect may have been used by the gunmen.

NI's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former IRA member, said nobody should say or do anything which would see Northern Ireland return to its troubles.

"I supported the IRA during the conflict, I myself was a member of the IRA but that war is over," said the Sinn Fein MP.

"Now the people responsible for that last night's incident are clearly signalling that they want to resume or restart that war."

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams described the shooting as an attack on the "peace process" and said it was "wrong and counter-productive".


HOW THE ATTACKS HAPPENED
1. Soldiers order pizza from delivery shop in Antrim. Two cars leave shop at about 2120 GMT
2. Four soldiers collect pizza from main gate at Massereene Barracks. As they do, two gunmen open fire from a nearby car. Two soldiers are killed, four people seriously injured including the pizza delivery men
3. Vauxhall Cavalier which police believe the gunmen to have used recovered in Ranaghan Lane, nr Randalstown


How the barracks attack happened

"Those responsible have no support, no strategy to achieve a United Ireland," he said.

"Their intention is to bring British soldiers back onto the streets. They want to destroy the progress of recent times and to plunge Ireland back into conflict."

Northern Ireland's First Minister and Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson offered his sympathies to the families of the victims, and said he and the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness would postpone a scheduled trip to the United States.

Mr Robinson said the attack was a "terrible reminder of the events of the past".

He said information that those responsible had "deliberately turned their weapons on civilians" after murdering the soldiers gave an "idea of the crazed gunmen involved in this".

"It is the duty of everyone to ensure these people are defeated," he said.

Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward condemned the shootings as "an act of criminal barbarism".

Loyalist political representatives made a plea to people within their communities not to retaliate.

Frankie Gallagher, from the Ulster Political Research Group, which has links with the paramilitary UDA, said: "The people who carried out this attack have no mandate for their futile actions.

"Their communities, the Irish nationalist and republican communities in Northern Ireland, must let them know that loud and clear."

A spokesman for the US Department of State said: "Our condolences go out to the families of the slain soldiers.

"We call on all parties in Northern Ireland to unequivocally reject such senseless acts of violence, whose intention is to destroy the peace that so many in Northern Ireland have worked so hard to achieve."

Source.

It's sad how some people can't let things go.

[Drake Dun]

This is tangental, and I want to stress that I am not expressing an opinion on the political dimensions of this (since I know jack diddly about them), but is anyone else annoyed by the fact that in modern times the word "cowardly" has somehow come to mean "committed by the underdog"?

You've got two guys, who probably have no formal military training, going and attacking soldiers who are part of a well trained, well equipped, and vastly larger military organization on their home turf. This is somehow cowardly? What should they have done, put in a phone call to let the enemy know they were coming? Challenged the soldiers to single duels? Put their dukes up like men?

It was the same thing after 9/11. Highjacking a plane with box cutters and intentionally flying it into a building at 600 mph is cowardly? Sorry, no. Call it evil. Call it stupid, or insane. You can call it all kinds of things, but there's nothing cowardly about it. That takes some serious balls. Meanwhile flying a state of the art, undetectable jet bomber at tens of thousands of feet in the air and dropping a laser guided bomb onto a pickup truck is somehow an act of stirring heroism.

[Maxim_Macabre]

Ones patriot is anothers terrorist.

[CptSternn]

Well thats it in a nutshell. The US/UK say the same thing about the Iraqis.

The reality is, you can't fight the US/UK war machine through conventional warfare. They have more tanks/planes/troops than any other nation and you can't fight that.

They like to use that sort of talk to try and make people think they are somehow superior, in efforts to get the enemy to expose themselves. Its like a grown up version of taunting in hopes they can get a clear shot at the people they obviously can't find.

What is real ironic, and quite funny, is that this is guerrilla warfare. During the American Revolution the Minute Men used the same techniques. The brits at that time period said the same about the Americans.

If you ever watch the movie 'The Patriot' with Mel Gibson they show this in great detail. The remark 'these men hide in the woods and fight, not showing themselves' and also say' they refuse to fight standing in columns like civilised, Christian men'.

You have to love how today they now try and use the same rhetoric and word play to hide the fact they have no real defence against this and that the trillions they spend on weapons can't fight an enemy who won't stand still on a battlefield.

[HumanePain]

Yeah, killing pizza delivery guys helps win everyone over to your side.

[Despanan]

"The Real IRA" sounds like the title of a reality show. Like any moment now I'm expecting to see a guy talking to the camera:

"Yeah, I killed a pizza man, but you gotta understand to fight the US/UK war machine you need to use...like, non conventional tactics. Like in The Patriot, man did you see that movie?...Mel Gibson totally kicked ass. I'm like that, like Mel Gibson."

[Drake Dun]

Mel put a fucking flag pole through a fucking horse's rib cage. TAKE THAT YOU FUCKING LIMEY HORSE. I say, how do you like the taste of gold-tipped American flag pole, my equine chappy? Would you be partial to a buttered scone to go with that?

It was Braveheart all over again, except, Mel wore blue woolen instead of a kilt this time. There's nothing like watching Mel Gibson kill British people to get you huffing and stamping and watching the theater screen with red-tinted vision through your righteously bloodshot eyes, while your girlfriend sits next to you rolling her eyes and sending text messages on her cell phone.

Seriously though, the comparison to American guerillas during the revolutionary war is apt. I would bet money - literally, not figuratively, that the British repeatedly levied charges of cowardice against the asymetrical tactics used by the colonists. How dare they not stand in little cluster in an open field and get blasted to shit by massed cannon fire? The spineless worms!

[CptSternn]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

Yeah, killing pizza delivery guys helps win everyone over to your side.

Killing collaborators is a long standing tradition in N. Ireland. The last ones that got killed were some contractors, plumbers I think, who renovated the military barracks. They were killed by an explosive device planted in their van.

It's the same as killing the contractors in Iraq.

[Drake Dun]

Dude, that's the wrong excuse. You need to take a page from Bush. What you do is, you explain how it's a tragic example of "collateral damage", and how your guys do everything in their power to see that innocent bystanders aren't harmed. Then you go on to explain how actually even though it was your (bombs/bullets/psychopathic private contractors) who were the direct cause of death, actually, everything is completely the fault of the other side, because after all, if they weren't opposing your plans in the first place, there wouldn't have been any violence at all!

[JCC]

The Real IRA are fucking idiots anyway.

[PortraitOfSanity]

Originally Posted by JCC

The Real IRA are fucking idiots anyway.

Either get the fuck off the island, or don't come crying when soldiers and loyalists get popped, k?

[JCC]

Originally Posted by PortraitOfSanity

Either get the fuck off the island, or don't come crying when soldiers and loyalists get popped, k?

The Real IRA 'pop' thirty civilians to every soldier and loyalist. Did the Omagh bombings kill soldiers and loyalists? Was Stephen Menary a threat to Irish sovereignity? I'm not saying that I disagree with defending yourself against soldiers and loyalists, but the Real IRA are fantastically inept, as evidenced by shooting at a pizza delivery boy.

[Despanan]

No JCC, you don't understand, listen to Sterrn, that boy was a COLLABORATOR those pizzas were obviously imperialist pizzas designed to repress the innocent IRA members.

They were probably smothered with...oppression...sauce...and baked in an oven of...tyranny.

[PortraitOfSanity]

That or the pizza guys just got caught in the crossfire.....

[JCC]

Originally Posted by PortraitOfSanity

That or the pizza guys just got caught in the crossfire.....

EXACTLY! That's the fucking problem with militant groups, they always get people in the crossfire, that would be bad enough in and of itself, but the Real IRA have probably gotten more people in the crossfire in their time than legitimately defending themselves from threats, something which these soldiers weren't anyway because they were about to be deployed to Afghanistan and therefore weren't actually meddling in any Northern Ireland affairs, making the whole thing seem like one big useless setback for Irish Republicanism's legitimacy. Good job Real IRA, keep it up.

[Albert Mond]

Nobody takes the IRA seriously, either way. I mean, 'Republican' is supposed to mean 'for the people'. The IRA can't even represent the Irish.

[CptSternn]

Then how do you account for the fact Sinn Féin is the second largest party in N. Ireland and the only party that exists in N. Ireland and Ireland? Are you also forgetting the IRA fought the brits and gained independence for the 26 counties now known as Ireland?

[Despanan]

...and then they battled the Klingons and the Romulans for intergalactic domination.

[JCC]

Originally Posted by CptSternn

Then how do you account for the fact Sinn Féin is the second largest party in N. Ireland and the only party that exists in N. Ireland and Ireland? Are you also forgetting the IRA fought the brits and gained independence for the 26 counties now known as Ireland?

Albert Mond meant that the majority of Ireland is ambivalent to republicanism insofar as that it would much rather just avoid another go at the Troubles. I support Irish republicanism, but independence will be gained through majority support, not through shooting a couple of teens in uniforms and jumping up and down at how fucking brilliant you are while Ulsters have a field day reporting on the barbaric nature of Republicans and their lack of concern for the opinion of the majority. How many people are seriously ideologically aligned with republicanism at the moment? A people's movement that doesn't have the support of the people is ridiculous.