The danger of the 24 hour news cycle.

It seems that everyone wants to be the newsbreaker nowadays. Michael Ledeen of The National Review is no exception. He claims to have the skinny on the capture of British ships by Iran that occurred yesterday. Guess what? It's to get Kerry elected, of course!

There's a perfectly straightforward explanation for the whole episode: The Brits were laying down a network of sensors to detect the movement of ships toward major Iraqi oil terminals. The Iranians considered that a bit of a threat. So they attacked.

And why, you might ask, did the Iranians feel threatened?

Because they were planning to attack (or have their surrogates attack) the oil terminals, silly.

And why attack the oil terminals?

Because they want to defeat President Bush in November, and they figure if they can get the price of oil up to around $60 a barrel, he'll lose to Kerry.

I read the whole article. Maybe this would be the one that convinced me that Kerry was wrong on terror and that I should vote Bush in the fall. I looked for proof of his assertions. Facts to back his claims. Nothing. Just wild speculation, it seemed. The Iranians did even "attack" really. Just captured eight sailors on three boats.

So I googled. And found a number of articles with Iranian claims of what was on board the ship.

Official sources said the small patrol boats were armed with heavy machine-guns, and identified the detained Britons as "Royal Navy commandos".

Iranian state television's Arabic-language channel, Al-Alam, said Iranian forces had also seized GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) devices, assault rifles, pistols, cameras and detailed maps of the Iran-Iraq border area.

Now I would think if Ledeen was right, they would have made some mention of the sensors as it would strength their case for capture. The map would have had special markings of where to drop the sensors.

Now after earlier announcements that prosecution of these men was imminent comes reports that they may be set free.

There are, meanwhile, unofficial reports that the Britons may indeed be freed soon, but it is likely that, behind the scenes, there are dissenting hardline voices who want at least to spin the affair out and teach the British a lesson about Iranian resolve and sovereignty.

The release of the men is not yet a foregone conclusion, but it is looking increasingly likely to be a matter of time.

Which would make little sense in Ledeen's hypothesis was right.

My conclusion? The National Review is read only by conservatives to be believed and by liberals who shake their head and wonder how they can report such things.