WELL, once again, for sheer effrontery, you have to hand it to the Shinners. "I don't think that there's a comparison to be made between the attacks [on the US] and the IRA," explained Danny Morrison to the BBC last week.

Pointing out that it was a bit thick of the Provos to tell us that "killing civilians is always wrong", the interviewer elicited from him the admission that "there were civilians killed in the course of this last 30 years, but, by and large, the IRA made attempts to issue warnings before bomb attacks. That's the distinction between the people who carried out the attacks in America."

Gerry Adams was at it last week, too, stung by media "mischief-making" in suggesting republican messages of sympathy were hypocritical. "Given previous IRA actions," he said generously, "It is a legitimate question to ask from the point of view of victims of attacks here but it is not a legitimate position for the media who are about informing people about what is going on." What's more, said Gerry, there was a "huge difference" between attacks on innocent civilians and those on the armed forces.

These condemnations of comparisons are rich indeed, coming as they do from people who have spent decades making preposterous and offensive comparisons between the Catholics of Northern Ireland, the blacks of Sixties Alabama, the blacks of South Africa under apartheid and any other oppressed people whose sufferings they can use for advantage.

However, we must be charitable: Danny and Gerry are getting on a bit and their memories may be failing. It was, for instance, worrying that Gerry's amnesia recently led him to say that IRA guns had been silent for seven years, forgetting that there was no ceasefire between February 1996 and July 1997 and that, even now, the IRA are still gaily using guns to murder and maim people in their own community.

So here are a few comparisons between the IRA and those who bombed the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Both targeted what Gerry described as "armed forces". Like the IRA, who as recently as June 1997 murdered two RUC men, those directing the US bombers will have been jubilant at killing military personnel in the Pentagon and police and fire officers in New York. Only difference one of scale. That so many of those of the NYPD and the NYFD who died were of Irish Catholic extraction adds to the similarities, since the majority of the security forces murdered by the Provos were fellow Irishmen. And, of course, they particularly targeted Catholics. Only difference one of scale.

Both targeted civilians. It may have escaped Gerry's memory, but in the last few decades the IRA have murdered more than 600 civilians and they're still at it. Just a few at random to jog his memory: Bloody Friday 1972 (nine civilians dead and more than 100 injured); La Mon House Hotel 1978 (12 dead and 23 injured); Mullaghmore 1979 (Lord Mountbatten, two children and an old woman); Enniskillen 1987 (11 dead including three married couples and 63 injured); Shankill Road fish shop 1993 (10 dead, 57 injured); Canary Wharf 1996 (two dead, 100 injured). Only difference one of scale.

(And as for Danny's point about the IRA attempting to give warnings yes, they often did, but in their zeal they usually made them misleading so that they could blow up security forces with secondary bombs.) Both used human beings as human bombs. In 1990, the IRA strapped three Catholic men into cars loaded with explosives, sent them to different targets and detonated the bombs by remote control. Only difference one of scale.

Both targeted the centre of democratic states. The IRA tried to assassinate the British Prime Minister and cabinet in Brighton in 1984 (five dead, 30 injured) and Downing Street in 1991. Only difference one of scale.

Both targeted centres of commerce: the Baltic Exchange, 1992 (three dead, £800 million damage); Bishopsgate, 1993 (one dead, £1,000 million damage). Only difference one of scale.

Oh, yes, and both are involved in globalised terrorism: our lads are off in Libya, Iraq, Columbia, Turkey, Spain, Corsica, the Balkans and anywhere else promising. Here, there doesn't even seem to be a difference of scale.

And as for the bombers being prepared to commit suicide. Are not Sinn Féin always demanding we honour Bobby Sands and all his colleagues who starved themselves to death for the cause? However, Danny rightly points to a real difference: "The British government has recognised the political status and legitimacy of republicanism through releasing all of the prisoners and through entering into peace negotiations with Sinn Féin." This, I take it, means that everything the IRA did has been OKed by Tony Blair retrospectively. Goodness, I knew he was an arch-appeaser when it came to terrorism in his own backyard, but I hadn't realised he'd gone that far.