There was also that report of a flotilla of U.S. Navy warships and one Israeli ship transiting the Suez Canal heading south in the direction of the Persian Gulf.

Which reminds yours truly of spring in Washington, D.C. in the year of 1801, which really was the second year that mostly swamp-like outline of a town was in operation as the capital of the United States, with the new occupant in the White House, the third president of the U.S. States, Thomas Jefferson who, as one of his first acts in office, ordered a squadron of four U.S. Navy warships to sail from the U.S. to Tripoli, Libya as a show of force because the pasha there at the time Yusuf Karamanli was threatening to start hijacking American commercial vessels in the Mediterranean to enslave their crews and passengers unless the Untied States paid more tribute.

But when the squadron got there many weeks later, it was already too late. The pasha had declared war against the United States, and as was the tradition on the Barbary Shore, his proclamation was made from a balcony of his inner city palace, which then licensed the crowd below to go wild, scream bloody murder and race off to the U.S. Consulate in the town to loot it.

The consul at the time, James Leander Cathcart, one of history’s more amazing people, a Scotch-Irish seaman who had spent 11 years a hostage-slave in Algiers, had the night before in secret sent his wife and two little girls over to the Danish Consulate for safety. So when the next morning the mob of howling Muslims swarmed toward his consulate, he at first tried to bribe them with cash but quickly saw the futility and raced up to the roof and jumped to the next roof and the next roof and fled across the city rooftops to the Danish consulate where he hid until he and his wife and little children were smuggled out of the city ten days later. That was the beginning of the War with Tripoli.

Anyway, today its was heart-warming to read of this flotilla not of death-obsessed Muslims heading for Israel but U.S. Navy warships and one little Israeli warship heading south through the Canal toward the Persian Gulf. Let’s hope for the best.

It was reported this flotilla belonging to the good guys and not today’s cousins of the legendary Barbary Pirates has the right to stop such a provocation vessel coming from Persia and inspect it for weapons.

Then Israel could put a UAV over the sucker to track it and make sure it takes on no new cargo…