[BRIEF NOTE] This is what they call "missing the point"

[rfmcdonald]

From The Independent, David McKittrick's article "IRA offered to shoot killers of McCartney":

The saga of the killing of the Belfast man Robert McCartney has taken another extraordinary turn with an IRA announcement that it was prepared to shoot those involved.

The terrorist organisation said it had made an offer to Mr McCartney's relatives to shoot up to four people, but the family had made it clear it did not want "physical action".

The shocked political reaction to the revelation included descriptions of it as barbaric, sick, obscene and desperate.

The IRA statement did not specify whether the word "shoot" meant to murder or merely wound the four men, but according to a republican source the IRA was prepared to kill them.

Mr McCartney was stabbed in a Belfast back street on 30 January after a Sunday night brawl involving both IRA and Sinn Fein members in a city centre pub.

The family's campaign for justice has spurred both the IRA and Sinn Fein into actions to limit the damage being inflicted on them by the killing and its aftermath. But yesterday's offer was seen as another sign that the IRA is in turmoil and is making a series of ill-advised steps. The idea of killing - or even wounding - four men, three of them IRA members, is seen as remarkable. Such a bloodbath would answer the accusation that the IRA is involved in a cover-up to protect its people. But the notion of an organisation, which has been on a declared ceasefire since 1997, confirming that it had offered to carry out such crimes in such a public way was received with something close to disbelief.

If this is the IRA's version of benevolent behaviour, um.

UPDATE (12:37 PM) : fripper points out a contrarian article from the Irish Post.

People are undoubtedly angry about the IRA in the Short Strand area of Belfast - but it's not anger at the intimidation of witnesses who might finger those who killed Robert McCartney at a city centre bar on January 30. Far from it.

The anger is directed at the IRA for what many see as its expulsion of a senior member after he was, in their view, wrongly accused of being involved. Resignations from Sinn Féin and the IRA are expected as a result.

[. . .]

Politicians lecturing the 3,000 inhabitants of the small Catholic enclave in east Belfast about their civic duty, as well as those reporting on events, are singing from a very similar hymn sheet. The tune is one that people in the Short Strand reject as both inaccurate and unfair.

They say they do not recognise the official account, that they live under the oppressive yoke of the IRA, and one ‘rogue' unit in particular, which has imposed a rule of fear since the ceasefire. Accounts of ‘IRA godfathers' and ‘gangs' causing people to cower are treated with derision locally.