So silent and speedy was the approach of the six Iranian vessels that prosecuted the capture, 1.8 miles inside Iraqi waters, that the HMS Cornwall , which properly should have been guarding its 'baby ship' did not have time enough to react. So this great big ship stood silently by as a BBC cameraman shot the unfolding event and as the victims of the 'kidnap' - Queen's English this, lost all communication with their mother vessel.

Soon enough, there was an international outcry against the Iranians, for kidnapping the 'sailors' among whom was one 'dedicated' mother who loved her daughter very much. The captors we learned were part of the nefarious Revolutionary Guards who are a law unto themselves, and the British sailors were diligently carrying out their duties when the Iranians ambushed them.

If like me you are unfamiliar with such technology as radar, or the arrangements for deployments of such patrol boats as the one in this very interesting story then you will no doubt have a few questions in your mind. Were the Iranian boats on silent mode? Given the fact that there have been innumerable attacks on the British forces in this waterway, why was no one on the lookout, why was the back-up helicopter pulled, why was the mother ship too far away to render any assistance to the 15 British service men and woman ? Had some switched off the radar on the HMS Cornwall or the one on the helicopter?

You see these questions are relevant because the British forces are, ostensibly at least, guarding the Iraqi waters. One assumes that the entry of a boat clearly a military boat would be cause for alarm, especially if it came so far into Iraqi waters. Again one would assume that in such a small corridor as the Shatt al Arab , the helicopter would have been able to see the Iranian boats, and that they would have been picked up as demanding some sort of vigilance.

But we don't live in that sensible world. The modern world demands that we suspend our brains. The Iranians are evil, war-mongers. They probably planned this attack for months in advance. They are probably seeking to divert our attention from the resolution against them at the UN (eh, fat chance really), they are trying to show up the Coalition of the Willing, they are trying to shore up their support inside Iran ( Ahmedinaropeadope), they are trying to do everything except... It really has not crossed anyone's mind that they may actually have been trying to protect themselves and their borders. It has not occurred to anyone that the British may, even accidentally have strayed into Iranian waters.

Surrounded to the West by an occupied Iraq, to the East by an occupied Afghanistan, threatened with sanctions for its nuclear energy programme (legal under its NPT obligations) and with an membership of the Axis of Evil that was forced on it, Iran has every reason to be scared of a gunboat with foreign troops patrolling its waters (again if this is as they say happened). Add to this the fact that the senior partner in the Coalition that damned Iraq, i.e. the USA only very recently captured Iranian diplomats inside Iraq, and again in Kurdish-Iraq an action that brought condemnation not just from the Iranians but from the Iraqi government itself. Did I say captured, must be a bout of the Queen's English. Considering the fact that these were civilians, kidnapped would be the term recommended by the Oxford Dictionary to which I defer. That tome would likely use the same word for the capture in Istanbul of a former Iranian General and may even go as far as to extend the term casus belli to these provocations.

It is odd then that the purveyors of wisdom in the Main Stream Media, would rather stream hysterics into our homes now claiming that the Iranians are out to create mayhem and cause war in the Middle East. I am reminded now of the fact that the Shatt al Arab is a disputed border, one that these two countries have fought a war over in the past, and one whose exact location is contended, especially as it is founded on the Thalweg principle which holds against the laws on nature, that riverine sands do not shift. I am also reminded that the war in Iraq is illegal by International Law, a fact even the diplomatic Kofi Annan has felt inspired to impress upon our consciousness. One may like to point out that the resolution that blessed the British patrols of this waterway expired on the 31^st of December, but such is nonsense. All that matters is that they were Iranians, and they had the nerve! Now, they'll catch it.