We don't want the smoking Armalite to be a mushroom cloud

One of the many mysteries about the rationality of Dubya's foreign policy is the seeming perverse incentive it sends to rogue states: if we think you might be developing weapons of mass destruction, we'll invade, but if we know for sure that you have WMDs, we'll negotiate. Case 1 is Iraq and Case 2 is North Korea. Hence the incentive to develop those WMDs as quickly as possible. Well, the IRA seems to have managed to get itself into the treasured category 2 without much effort, to judge by the biographical details of the new White House Northern Ireland envoy:

The new United States envoy to Northern Ireland has been named as Mitchell B Reiss. Mr Reiss replaces Richard Haass and will take up the post early in the New Year.
He was described as a US government official with extensive experience on nuclear disarmament.
Mr Reiss has spent time working with the North Korean government on nuclear disarmament, and will focus on the issues of IRA decommissioning and attempts to restore the power-sharing administration at Stormont.

Yes folks, the IRA must have nukes.