There's an easy answer for the deep thinkers now torturing themselves for an explanation of the Iranian seizure of 15 British hostages:  The mullahs took the hostages because that is what they do. They've been doing it for a long time.

Why now? Because now is when they succeeded in doing it; they've been trying all along.

The interesting and important question is what we - yes, we - are going to do about it.

You can be sure that the "professionals" in Foggy Bottom and Whitehall are giving learned memos to their leaders in which the word "de-escalate" appears with some frequency, along with "diplomatic solution."

I doubt many of them will lose much sleep over their own considerable responsibility for the current unpleasantness, but let's write a footnote to their memos that says: The Brits have labored mightily for many years to prevent the United States from pursuing vigorous action against Iran.

It is settled wisdom among mainstream journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow. “Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency,” wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom.

But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.

Liberal journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a “national disgrace” the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

A great hoax is being perpetrated on the world, the hoax of negotiations as an untried method to "solve" the "Iranian problem." In fact, we have been negotiating with the mullahs ever since-indeed even before-the 1979 revolution that deposed the Shah and brought to power the Islamic Fascist regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In the intervening 28 years, we have participated in countless face-to-face encounters, myriad "demarches" sent through diplomatic channels, and meetings-some on the fringes of international conferences-involving "unofficial" representatives of one government or the other.

The lack of any tangible result is obvious, yet the chatterers, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, and cheered on by intellectuals, editorialists, and instant experts on Iran, act as if none of this ever happened.

Sophisticated net surfers will have noticed that, despite my proclamations that "It can't be done," there is a plethora of commercial movies - the kind you buy on DVD - that are available for download on the various "pirate" services, of which Kazaa is (was) the most well known.

Actually, when I say "can't," I mean "shouldn't" - but there is technology, both hardware and software that allows intrepid souls to "rip" (copy) DVDs off the disk and onto their computers.

You don't have to be police lineup material to use the methods described below to copy DVDs. Maybe you want to make backups or copies of a wedding or Bar-mitzvah DVD to send to family and friends abroad.

So how do they - and we - do it?

The headline on the top of the front page of the New York Times yesterday, May 26, was: "FBI told of Koran abuses." The wording of the headline and the prominence of the display give the casual reader the impression the story -- written by Neil Lewis -- was new, and that the story was true. Neither is so.

Lewis' story was based on reports of interrogations by FBI agents of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and 2003. He noted in his third paragraph that "they are accounts of unsubstantiated allegations made by the prisoners under interrogation."

The New York Times didn't mention that an al Qaeda training manual, captured a couple of years ago by British police, instructs detainees to make false charges against their captors.

So why is so much of the media giving so much prominence to a recycled story of unsubstantiated charges made by America's enemies who have been told to make false accusations if captured?