John McCain Speech on the IRA at the American Ireland Fund National Gala

The IRA has long enjoyed the support, in Ireland as well as in my country, of people who might have regretted their tactics, but appreciated their service in the republican cause and their defense of Catholics persecuted in the North. Whatever your views about the historic cause they claimed to have served or the methods they employed, which were, in my opinion, indefensible, no one can honestly claim today that the IRA is anything better than an organized crime syndicate that steals and murders to serve its members' personal interests. There is nothing "republican" about the Irish Republican Army. They are inarguably an impediment to peace, to freedom and to justice in Northern Ireland, and anyone, Irish or American or British, who desires and works for the success of peace, freedom and justice must denounce in the strongest possible terms [...] the IRA itself, and any political organization that would associate with the IRA or grant it any place in the political life of the country.