Not quite steamchicken. While some Irish people are quite happy to see Saddam bombed past the stone age, some of us are rather miffed that US planes are landing here, since we're meant to be neutral. And various other reasons too, which are covered in the IABB thread whose URL is posted up above (and which only descended into name-calling once or twice
).
Of course, those that feel that the protesting was immature and childish can now relax: this morning the Irish government deployed 120 armed Irish troops in Shannon to protect US military assets from Irish citizens who were engaged in peaceful protest (as is their right under Article 40 section 6 of the Irish constitution). The non-peaceful protestors are currently being dealt with by the courts and thus are not a threat And despite early reports to the contrary by the minister for transport, no-one was hurt, traumatised or hospitalised in any of the three incidents which means the worst charge is effectively vandalism.
You'll have to excuse my rather annoyed tone here - I always thought that a democracy's armed forces were used by the government to protect the people from foreign military assets. It's rather galling to discover your own government has other ideas
