Firearms, knives, police and fellons

[MMI]

As Northern Ireland does not reflect the British Army's most glorious period, I do not think it is appropriate to compare police ineptitude or incompetence in killing innocent individuals with the reprehensible behaviour of the British Army in Ulster, where it not only took part in incidents like Bloody Sunday, but colluded with Loyalist paramilitaries to create, train and arm murder squads, and then gave them the freedom to operate and escape. It's hard for me to criticise the USA's Republican supporters, or Colonel Gadaffi for financing the PIRA when the British Army itself sponsored Loyalist terrorism.

The British police do not sponsor crime or arrange for dangerous criminals to be murdered. They just fuck up now and then.

If a child holding a lit petrol bomb appeared likely to toss it towards a British soldier back in those days, I'm quite sure he would have been shot before the bomb left his hand, and I think ian confirms this. Fortunately, in ian's case, he managed to talk the child out of it. But I doubt he was following standard procedure and I commend him for his action. (Soldiers are not the same as the Army.)