gurrier said:
It is supported by a long list of IRA members who served very long sentences for attempting to import arms into Ireland. A good example of such state infiltration being the FBI operation which caught Gerry McKeogh. There are literally dozens of other similar cases which reveal that in many cases, the suppliers of the weapons were informing security services throughout.
Now that's a fair point. Sure lots of guys got caught smuggling arms. Smuggling is risky especially if you don't have the infrastructure set up. I'd add lot's didn't and those that were caught were often very foolish and PIRA learnt by their mistake. I wouldn't confuse a long record of arrests with actual success in stopping arms smuggling, there are plenty of drugs smugglers in prison and no one thinks they are making a signifigant dent in the trade.
gurrier said:
They captured one of the shipments in the bay of biscay FFS!
You seem to have forgotton that they didn't intercept the (a very low estimate here) 3 previous shipments before the French intercepted the Eskund. 25% success rate there and that with a rumored (Ed Moloney believes any old shite but it might be true) Army council level mole in place.
There's an online account
here that corresponds with the Befast securicrat gossip I've heard about the Eskund.
At first, the weapons from Libya were old and unexciting, and were chosen from a random warehouse. However, after United States aircrafts were granted permission to take off in Great Britain and subsequently bombed Tripoli as punishment for supporting terrorists, Colonel Gandaffi supplied the IRA with metric tons of explosives and rocket grenades. The IRA was encouraged to send the largest ships they could find, and Gandaffi would fill them up.[19]
The IRA successfully received tons of weapons until one shipment was accidentally discovered by the Dutch. French patrol aircraft noticed the Eskund, a ship registered to sail from Malta to Gibraltar, erratically change course numerous times. Acting on a tip that the ship may be transporting illegal drugs, French authorities seized the ship and uncovered 110 tons of weapons, including a SAM missile. The weapons were contained in boxes stamped Libyan Armed Forces and were set to explode. Though this last trip from Libya ultimately failed, the entire operation could be deemed a great success. Over 120 tons of weapons were already in possession of the IRA, and the British government never suspected that Libya, one of the most watched countries in the world, was the supplier.[19]
That is almost unbelievably naive. Security services do not know the concept of 'open eyed trust'. What do you think SIS / Special Branch / MI5 do with their tens of thousands of personnel and billions of pounds of funding?
You may not be aware that chronic underfunding is part of the explanation for the Libyans arms debacle. But even with post 9-11 funding levels the reality is security really isn't like a Tom Clancy novel the bad guys will always get through.
There are no armed anti-state groups in the US and high powered rifles and semi-automatic weapons are almost freely available in high street shops...
Well there is a far right militia movement in the US that carried out bank raids, racial attacks and after a little while blew up a large building in Oaklhoma killing over 150 Yanks. All this under the all seeing eyes of the FBI.
You're right about the US being a prime source for IRA arms. The IRA continue to source guns, especially pistols, on the Yank market as the PBS clip reveals it's child play there are so many outlets its uncontrollable. They've got caught doing this mainly when they went via NORAID contacts which is crawling with British assets.
gurrier said:
The russians have an army which is so under-paid and has such poor morale...
Your point here that major source of Chechen arms probably is the Russian army is entirely correct and that some of their quartermasters will sell to all buyers, even those with Irish accents, this is a major part of SWLA problem.
I don't know were you get your talismanic faith in Yank intelligence, they have great SIGINT, and analysts but are rather weak in other areas particularly collaboration with other intelligence agencies. Langley has money but is in terrible shape at the moment, the HUMINT side has been ripped to shreds and most of its old Eastern Europe guys have been put out to grass.
You underate the Russians. Putain is ex-KGB and Russian intelligence is not underfunded, they remain a principle and controlling arm of state. The Russians being old skool HUMINT specialists have long established networks in Eastern Europe that are much deeper than anything the CIA ever had. They still can't stop Chechen gangsters importing a steady flow of material. I have heard a tin foil hatted theory, from a Russian Army Colonel, that there is only one explanation... the bastards don't want to stop them!
gurrier said:
I understand that there is a black market arms trade. That is not what I am disagreeing with.
This is obvious from the SWLA monitoring reports posted above and a host of other sources. Now the point I'd like you to absorb here is that this market is several orders of magnitude bigger in the 21st century than in the 80s. The sourcing problems that existed in the 80s are greatly reduced. That even unresourced IRA splinter groups can get hold of rocket launchers says a lot.
gurrier said:
However, unless you think OBL and the mujahadeen are CIA inventions, you must realise that the islamists have tremendous resources and thousands of highly trained fighters. Their chosen tactics and personnel are a reflection of the enormous difficulty that they face in using anything more visible.
OBL has very clever people but they are an insurgent orgainization. As terrorists (read Sageman) their tradecraft does not have the depth of PIRA and they are not professional criminals with a known record of lucrative and highly successful smuggling. Hezabollah and the AQ II that is emerging in Iraq are very different stories.
Your base assumption here is faulty as well. We really have no way of knowing what Jihadis may have smuggled into the UK, there was a big scare a year or two ago that they were planning a SAM attack on Heathrow. British securicrats clearly really don't share your iron confidence in their control of sea borders. They were as astounded by 7/7, as the Brighton Bombing, or the Mortar attack on No 10.
To summarise:
1. It's beyond dispute that it is easier to discretely source 650 AK47s now than in 1980.
2. Once sourced it's no harder to smuggle guns than fags, which PIRA are known to do rather well.
3. PIRA is now a large effective transnational Mafia like orgainization and so much more able to do this now than in the 80s.
4. Our security services are not all knowing and all seeing. If PIRA want to re-arm they can't be stopped.
In short De Chastilan is talking out of his fat arse.
