Why was Omagh bombed? The excuse given by the `Real IRA' was an insult to the intelligence of those who were expected to swallow it.
"It was a commercial target, part of an ongoing war against the Brits . . . It was not our intention at any time to kill any civilians."
And the second announcement was as pretentious as the first: "In response to appeals from Bertie Ahern and others" the `Real IRA' was "embarking on a process of consultation on our future direction. In the meantime, all military operations have been suspended."
You'd never have guessed that what they'd done was to murder 28 people - shoppers, shop workers and children - by planting a 500lb car bomb in a busy street and giving a callously inadequate warning.
To claim that this was a strike against "a commercial target" or "part of an ongoing war" was so much guff. As obscene as the bomb - or the way in which the `Real IRA' would, no doubt, write off Omagh's terrible loss: collateral damage.
The wide world watched funeral after funeral creep through the quiet hills of Tyrone. But, as mourners tried to console each other, the brazen pretence that this was anything but an attack on them - and the future of Northern Ireland - mocked their grief.
They had chosen to support the Belfast Agreement - negotiated by the Irish and British governments and most of the Northern parties, endorsed by the great majority of those who live on this island.
It was not good enough for the leaders of the `Real IRA'. This was their first target on Saturday.
They had another target in view. The unelected leaders of the `Real IRA' insist that the elected leaders of Sinn Fein have no right to take part in any arrangement that does not conform in every respect with their version of the Republic.
It's a singular vision, unchanging, unchangeable and impervious to the views of the people who are meant to believe in it.
Eamon de Valera once said the people had no right to do wrong. He was wrong - and in due course not only came to accept the people's right to decide their future but defended it against those who clung to his original view.
De Valera may have changed; the `Real IRA' will not. In their view, not only have the people no right to do wrong; republican leaders have no right to follow the people's wishes. The people voted to accept the Belfast Agreement. The `Real IRA' believes that it can destroy that agreement by provoking unionists and loyalists to the point at which they'll abandon it altogether.
If that doesn't happen, the group's hope is that the other signatories will become so sick of republican violence (whatever its source) they'll expel Sinn Fein or restrict its role in the Assembly.
In either case the leadership of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and their colleagues would be seriously undermined; and, just as they replaced Ruairi O Bradaigh in the 1980s, they too would be dispatched.
What remained of the republican movement would then be reunited, presumably under the leadership of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and the armed struggle would resume.
This is not what Bernadette Sands McKevitt said this week; it's the logic of the position that she and her followers adopt; the only plausible political explanation for the current tactics and apparent strategy of her committee and the `Real IRA'.
Ms Sands McKevitt and her allies deny responsibility for Omagh. Little more than a month ago, others denied the blight of sectarianism that oozed from the field at Drumcree and hung over the Carnany estate in Ballymoney when Christine Quinn's children were burned to death.
The denials were, and are, unconvincing. Some saw Omagh coming several months ago, if not when the current series of bombings began with an attack on Seamus Mallon's town, Markethill, Co Armagh, last September.
The series continued this year, with bombs defused in Banbridge, Dundalk, Hack balls cross, Armagh and Dun Laoghaire; explosions in Portadown, Moira, Newtownhamilton and Banbridge; mortar attacks in Armagh, Forkhill and Newry; explosives discovered in Howth, London and Dundalk.
Jim Cusack, whose latest report appears in today's issue, presented an ominous analysis in The Irish Times on July 15th under the heading: "`Real IRA' seems determined to pick up where Provisionals left off".
Some Provisionals who refused to accept the direction taken by Adams and McGuinness had been joined by others of the ironically named republican family in outright opposition to their strategy.
The split, fear of which had been used by Sinn Fein's leaders, nationalist politicians and sympathetic commentators to excuse or explain why they tiptoed between violence and democracy, had become a reality.
Now it's clear that well-meaning attempts to hold the support of the hardliners have failed. Those who've chosen democracy and politics over force must drive their message home, not just by condemning the murders at Omagh but by facing the consequences of condemnation.
For Sinn Fein that means saying the war is over and telling friends, supporters and opponents that change can no longer be postponed.
Some, no doubt, will find it hard. Some will balk at the idea, believing that republicanism is and must always be synonymous with violence. And some will join the `Real IRA'.
I'VE watched two deadly republican divisions at close quarters. One produced the Official and Provisional movements, the other led to the establishment of the IRSP and the INLA. Once they'd happened, both were irrevocable; reconciliation was out of the question.
Attempts to fudge issues, by papering over differences with rhetoric, simply cost time and lives - and added to confusion among followers whose loyalty was often more personal than political.
Followers of the Adams-McGuinness line no doubt recognised last weekend the handiwork of people they'd trained or worked with not too long ago. And when Francie Mackey tried, on the steps of the town hall in Omagh, to say - and yet not say - that he refused to condemn the bombing, he was giving a fair imitation of Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness themselves.
That brave man, Liam de Paor, once wrote of the two parties in the Western world: those who take sides with the weak and poor and those who take sides with the rich and powerful.
There is another division in Ireland now. It's between those who use, encourage or tolerate violence as a means to political ends and those who neither use nor condone it. There is no middle way.
The point was made to me on Sunday by Paddy Joe McClean, one of the "hooded men" about whose inhuman and degrading treatment the Government complained at the European Court of Human Rights after the introduction of internment in the 1970s.
P.J. McClean is from Beragh and, on Saturday, he hurried back to Omagh where he is a community worker. After a lifetime of struggle for civil rights and peace, it was, he said, the toughest day.
It was the 29th anniversary of the first deaths in Belfast.