Gerry Adams glad that the Troubles in Northern Ireland are over

Yes he has denied membership of the IRA

I don't think Adams has denied membership of the IRA and if he has it beggars belief. IT is possible he knew of McConville's execution,as Adams states correctly There were executions on both sides. Let's not forget it's an election year demonizing opponents is the order of the day.

I suppose one's feelings about the IRA, Gerry Adams and the Peace Process over all play a huge part in how one disseminates Gerry's meaning. I believe the IRA did what it felt it had to do in great times of horrific fear and criminality on all sides. There are no innocents--not the British, Unionists, IRA, etc. It was a tragedy born from hundreds of years of oppression that should never have happened, and now it is time for the long re-education and healing process. Mr. Adams is correct--everyone deserves to know what happened to their loved ones during the many years of the Troubles. Unfortunately I fear that there will never be clarity, because the vows that people took prohibit them from turning their backs on their belief systems and their actions. They and the survivors have to live with that, just as it is in any post war state. Let's just hope that Northern Ireland can one day be what it once was, a very rich and cultural part of Ireland minus the need or required "Northern" in front of it.

At the end of the day, we know that if it were not for the IRA and its highly effective guerilla campaign, Northern Ireland would still be ruled as a "Protestant state for a protestant people" by unyielding unionist bigots at Stormont. Thanks to courageous, self-sacrificing men (and women) like Gerry Adams, the political landscape on the ground in northern Ireland has been utterly transformed to embrace equality and mutual respect.

So Gerry Adams wants "an effective, independent and international truth recovery process" I wonder what such a body would find in relation to Gerry. Would his claim that he was never, ever, EVER (ever) a member of the IRA be vindicated, or would the ruling be that he led the Belfast Brigade during its bloodiest years in the 1970s and remained a leading member of the Army Council, directing strategy and ordering "hits," until the mid-1990s? I give Adams great credit for his pro-active role in sustaining the peace process and persuading the IRA to endorse purely political means. I would also understand how he, from his background, became swept up in the IRA and played his part in the armed struggle. But, in the end, I cannot respect a man who lies to himself and others and insists against all the evidence that there is no blood on his hands. Shakespeare got it right: "To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."