A Dublin's Foreign Affairs spokesman recently declared: "The presence of US military personnel in transit through Shannon (airport) on stop-over (to attacking Iraq) has no implications whatsoever for Irish neutrality."

Emmet Stagg, of the Labour Party, has said: "We are a militarily neutral country and I want to know how this fits in with that position."

But, perhaps the Foreign Affairs spokesperson is correct. Irish neutrality has been a sham for ages now, so yet another violation of the principle of neutrality may really offer "no implications whatsoever."

The Dublin regime's long experience policing the border to assist Britain with its occupation of six Irish counties was no doubt useful in enabling it to once more offer its services to imperialism, this time of the Yankee variety. Further, the bizarre logic that has enabled the southern partionist statelet to claim sovereignty over the entire island of Ireland in its constitution, while engaging in a partnership with the foreign government making exercise of the constitutionally claimed sovereignty impossible precisely on "security concerns" related to their occupation, made it far easier to reach the conclusion that allowing US military planes to use its national territory for the purpose of refueling on their way to a unilateral attack on Iraq would not violate Irish political neutrality.

The fact is, the Dublin regime doesn't have a clue what national sovereignty means any more than it knows what neutrality means. It is a regime of boot-licking lackeys for imperialism whose chief concern for decades has been selling the Irish nation's resources and its citizen's labor to the world's capitalists. And, while its most recent example of its character is appalling, it is hardly surprising.

It is long past time that the scoundrels in Leinster House be swept out by the Irish people and this travesty of a national government replaced by one that will place the interests of Ireland and its people -- throughout Ireland's 32 counties--as its top priority, rather than seeing how it can best serve the interests of imperialist exploiters.