Rich Neal: “I want to thank Chairman Lantos and certainly Chairman Smith for bringing this resolution to the floor today. One of the…”

“I want to thank Chairman Lantos and certainly Chairman Smith for bringing this resolution to the floor today. One of the reasons that American foreign policy has triumphed in Ireland has been because this was done in a bipartisanship way, a bipartisanship way, the way American foreign policy formally was conducted. And the success that we have enjoyed in the North of Ireland has largely been indispensable due to the involvement of America, and revisiting these cases, as Mr. Smith has requested and Mr. Lantos has sanctioned, is terribly important. Think of these murders, cold-blooded murders, shooting down attorneys who were providing a common defense for suspected, suspected, members of the IRA. Never was there ever indication that they were members of the IRA; they were suspected members of the IRA, and they were not entitled to a common defense under the former justice system in the North of Ireland. So, the attorneys are murdered as well as the suspected members of the IRA. What is notable about this is what occurred last week. Many of us in this Chamber, Members of this House, have been involved in cases dating back to Gibraltar, to Birmingham, and to a series of other cases which we in this House brought forward. It is Members of this body that demanded that the British Government bring these cases to light and be put under the magnifying glass of critical analysis.”