No kidding. It's not like we have a crystal ball. Of all the nations in the Middle East, who would you have thought to be the only one since the 1960s to actually attack our military forces?

Sure, everyone remembers the Exocet missile that hit the Stark. Iraq said it was an accident and that they supposedly punidhed/executed the pilot. ...though that story changed a bit years later when the U.S. came out against Saddam.

But not too many people remember the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty at the opening of the Six Day War. This wasn't just one lone pilot. This was a combined air and sea assault. Later Israel would officially claim they didn't identify the Libery as an American ship but there are many skeptics. The theory goes that the Israelis didn't want the American ship spying and gather intelligence about Israeli military movements - thinking the U.S. might share some of that information with Arab nations in an attempt to diffuse the conflict.

That region of the world has been a catbox practically since time began.