Have British soldiers been made scapegoats for the events of Bloody Sunday by the Saville inquiry?

HAVE YOUR SAY

If troops fired without justification, they should have appropriate blame attached, as should the IRA for firing too. Although, I don't think that it is in anyone's interests to prosecute soldiers after this length of time. Especially when terrorists have been exonerated of their crimes in the name of the peace process. I think this report should be the end of the matter and it should be passed to history.
Laskovar - UK

tony Blair created this monster by allowing a inquiry £200 million later we are still now further on blame being tossed all over the place David Cameron apologizes for what the paras done their job the IRA pira and other paramilitary groups never apologized for the atrocious deeds they done so why does cameron have too squirming man that he is

jim hamilton - glasgow

This was 38 years ago. Would the Americans allow their Veterans to be prosecuted now, for alleged attrocities in 1970s Vietnam?
Let sleeping dogs lie.
No inquiry should be allowed to last longer than one year or cost more than £1 million a month, or £12 million in total.
The £200 million cost of this inquiry would have been better spent modernising the Harland & Wolf shipyard. Then the Royal Navy & commercial customers could get large ships built to the most modern economical methods.
The Odense shipyard in Denmark competes well against the far East shipyards to build large container ships. European shipyards can compete if they have adequate investment.
John Hartley - Woking/Surrey/UK

Martin Mcguinness was directly responsible for firing the first shots that day and ultimately is responsible for the deaths that occured. The Paras were and always will be Heroes for the way they acted that day. So if the Heroes are prosecuted then hopefully Mcguinness's involvement will come out, but we can't have that can we, the politicians will not allow it. So it is unlikely that they will be charged with murder, either way people are looking for scapegoats, as they did with Don Payne. Whatever happens Adams and Mcguinness will never be charged with the ordering of every death of a member of the security forces and civilians during the war that sinn fein/ira declared and then decided to object to the fact that our brave troops actually had the audacity to fire back at them.
All our troops who served in NI at the time are Heroes, people can pontificate all they want, they will never know what went on if they were not there, only those that were know what it was like. Maybe if we had continued in the way the Paras did we could have had a better outcome in NI and defeated sinn fein/ira completely.
Peter Williams - Manchester

Any shooting has to have the ablility to be justified, the excuse that the IRA got away with indiscriminate murder does not change the fact the army is a legally established military organisation and has to act responsibly especially when used as an aid to civil power. The Para's on this occasion just got it wrong, and were rightly held to account.
Bernard Price - RNSME

Re Peter Williams

I live in N. Ireland, do you?
Not a fan of IRA, in fact the opposite. How this website allows you to justify and encourage murder is beyond me in print, but if you must write at least make it sensible. A million troops here would not have solved the problems, some people saw troops here as an occupation, others saw them as a guarantee that they would stay part of the UK. I think the troops were used a scapegoats, but your ramblings are just unbelievable.
MichaeL - Armagh, UK

As the long awaited peace in NI takes effect we have to be careful no to look for skeletons in the cupboard to hang out to dry to appease those who are not happy at that peace. No good comes from trying to prosecute soldiers after all this time, yes admit a mistake may have happened, but will the terrorists be prosecuted for theirs mistakes? I don,t think so, so why hang our guys out to dry?!!!
fred jacques - arbroath scotland ex forces