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Max

Your posts usually are worthy of debate but I'm afraid absolute naiivety is showing through on this issue. Again I will state I live in NI. In past years the RUC did move in on paramilitary funerals and consequently days and weeks of rioting ensued as a result so after a while they knocked that on the head given all the bad press they got on top of eveything else.

Also do you have any idea how many people it takes to carry out a successful surveillance on 1 person, I do and frankly you'd need hundreds and hundreds of personnel to track down all the dissidents and follow them 100% of the time to find all their hides etc etc. Its simply not possible. Its hard enough following 1 person all the time if they are surveillance unaware but the dissys are surveillance aware and this makes it even harder. You need several surveillance teams rotating on 1 target every 2 hours.

So please if you don't live here or don't understand NI please don't try and tell us how 'it should be done'

You're entitled to your viewpoint, but I think this is an interesting debate to be had.

If it's hard to do in an urban environment imagine how hard it must be to do in Afghanistan ! They'll never find Osama, so why pretend it's achievable ?

No mate I entirely agree and I like the way you open up topics for debate I just think that you've missed the mark on this one, but as you say it's my opinion and you have yours! Hope no offence was taken!

No, no offense taken. All is cool. I have never visited NI so I know less about it than you but even if I say so myself I know quite a lot for someone who has lived this side of the water all his life. There is of course a text-book understanding, which I think I have of this - namely reading about it, watching documentaries, knowing Irish people in London (although none of them are involved with anything obviously), and having first hand experience of a place and its day-to-day goings on. That of course means you know a lot more about it than myself. I find this subject interesting.

I doubt the dissident Republican paramiltaries will do anything major again, because of the wrath that will follow from all-quarters, and because Dublin now has special no-jury Courts to deal with people who carry out major atrocities. They set up these jury-free Courts after the Omagh bombing as I'm sure you are aware.

I hope you're proven right!