When the Navy changed its timetable on the bombing of the destroyer Cole, it threw new light on the latest terrorist attack against the United States.

The first story was that the explosion came as the billion-dollar cruise-missile ship was tying up at a refueling platform in the middle of the harbor of Aden. Small boats were all around, handling the destroyer’s mooring lines. The attackers’ small boat supposedly mingled with the others and was not seen as a threat as it came alongside to fire its deadly explosive charge. The lesson seemed to be, as Navy officials said, that in times and places of danger, such attacks can never be absolutely prevented.

But for some reason, the Navy had the scenario wrong. Later, after being questioned by the Navy Times, a non-government newspaper, it issued a correction. The attack actually came more than two hours after the destroyer was tied up and about 45 minutes after refueling had begun. The attacking boat approached alone, long after the mooring boats had left the scene. Men on the strange boat are said to have waved a greeting, and the patrols on the destroyer’s deck are said to have waved back.

Was the new lesson that the attack could have been prevented? Should the armed sailors patrolling the destroyer deck have ordered the small boat away and fired if it continued toward the Cole? Should the destroyer have fired its two powerful 20-mm cannon and sunk the strange boat? Should the skipper of the Cole be court-martialed because his sailors did not suspect the worst and head off the attack?

Don’t jump to conclusions, warns Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, USN (Ret.), vice president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. The independent organization, never an apologist for the U.S. military establishment, is often one of its harshest critics.

Adm. Carroll concedes that a court martial could grow out of the incident, “But I wouldn’t mind defending him. He did everything within his power.”

He points out that American forces cannot legally open fire in a foreign port unless under direct attack. For all they knew, the small boat could have carried the family of Yemen’s president or prime minister, motoring out to see the American visitor.

Adm. Carroll says it was prudent for the Cole to top off its fuel tanks, but the harbor at Djibouti, 150 miles across the Gulf of Aden on the horn of Africa, would have been a better choice. Djibouti is less hazardous. French intelligence agents there might have detected preparations for the attack.

But in many parts of the world these days, the 101 navy ships in foreign ports and foreign waters are vulnerable to terrorist attack. “They have a bull’s-eye painted on them,” says the admiral. The means, the time and place, and the target are in the hands of the terrorists.

Heightened security now has been ordered for the Cole. A heavily armed picket boat constantly circles it. But no precautions can guarantee protection, says the admiral. Such losses are a price America must pay if it continues to show the flag abroad as the world’s superpower.