It seems to me that Irish Governments have been in breach of the Constitution in allowing Shannon Airport to be used as a staging post for American troops on their way to various wars.
I am no lawyer but I occasionally read the Constitution, or parts of it in “hard copy” or online and Article 9 commits the state to the pursuit of the resolution of international disputes by negotiation or disinterested arbitration.
Those were the guidelines that Eamon De Valera and Frank Aiken followed, bringing great honour to Ireland for at least half a century. And which I believe Charles Haughey followed when he didn’t congratulate Margaret Thatcher on the sinking of the General Belgrano.
The abuse of Shannon Airport by American planes taking kidnapped prisoners to imprisonment, torture or death in Guantanamo or an American Gulag offends every defensible code of conduct and was presumably so unthinkable when our Constitution was drafted that it is not dealt with in that Document.
And putting a man on trial for attempting to search American planes in Ireland for the unfortunates held on them cries to Heaven for retribution.
What, you may ask, is THE IRISH TIMES view on that question? Or that of its readers,
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