Posted on 06/24/2005 5:14:00 PM PDT by Irish_Thatcherite
BELFAST (Reuters) - The IRA admitted on Friday to the 1973 killing of a teenage girl that it had blamed on the British army and apologised to her family who had called on the paramilitaries to accept responsibility.
Kathleen Feeney was shot dead near her home in Londonderry. At the time, the IRA, which put its violent, 30-year campaign against British rule on hold in 1997, blamed British soldiers for the 14-year-old's murder.
"We wish to apologise unreservedly to the Feeney family for the death of Kathleen and all the grief that our actions have caused to them," the IRA said in a statement to the Derry Journal.
British Army commanders in the area said some of their troops came under fire at the time of the incident, but denied any of the soldiers had fired the fatal shots.
Last year the Feeney family asked the IRA to admit its members had killed Kathleen, saying their failure to do so had added to the family's hurt and pain.
Friend:
I was in the US Navy, and no better friends did I ever have than the British. However, being part Irish, I have to resent the way that the Irish were treated. That doesn't mean you or your generation behaved that way, but the Irish were treated worse than dogs, and in their own country!
Makes you wonder at those Anglo-Boer wars....
The "Boers" were only partly of Dutch origin. This particular nationality is readily traced to Huguenots who lost their way trying to flee to America.
Look, the problem with the division, as well as the establishment of a Free Ireland, rests with Wilson's demands.
If you recall, all the disputed areas in Europe were to hold plebescites where folks would decide what country they wished to be part of. German speakers were expected to affiliate with Germany or Austria while French speakers were espected to affiliate with France or Belgium. In the East, Hungarians speakers, Czech speakers, Slovak speakers, etc. would all chose appropriately, and in the South, Southern Slavs would affiliate with a new state called Yugoslavia (unaccountably made up of all sorts of ethnic groups, language groups, religious groups, etc., entirely the opposite of what was going on in Central and Western Europe).
Applying this principle to Ireland resulted in the Brits having a valid argument to keep Ulster out of the Irish Republic.
The US Congress didn't dispute this since it was in conformance with the Wilsonian standards they had encouraged for use elsewhere in Europe.
In the United States there'd been riots in the street if any of the Wilsonian standards had been proposed for use in drawing state lines of course, but such is the nature of hubris!
I see, thanks!
Odds are the IRA types who tried doing business with AlQaida were slaughtered on the spot. Anybody show up missing lately?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.