IF THE TSARNAEVS WERE PART OF A TERRORIST NETWORK, IT WAS A NETWORK MADE UP OF IDIOTS

The Obama administration is refusing to treat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant and intends to try him in civilian court. The FBI is looking into possible sources of the Tsarnaev brothers' politicization, particularly in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's last trip overseas, but that won't be enough to prevent the wingers from howling about inadequate attention to their obvious involvement in an international terror network, or local terrorist cell, or something, anything, bigger than themselves.

But if the Tsarnaevs were part of a terror network or a U.S. cell, whatever they were part of was mostly incompetent, because they did many baffling things. Mother Jones has a list of eleven, including:

1. Wear a backwards hat and no sunglasses. Unlike his older brother, Dzhokhar made little effort to prevent cameras from capturing his face, making him easier to identify when the FBI released security camera photos on Thursday....

3. Leave the car in the shop. The Wall Street Journal reported that Dzhokhar stopped by an auto-body shop in Watertown on Tuesday to pick up the Mercedes he'd brought in for repairs....

6. Run out of cash...

9. Stop for snacks. The Los Angeles Times reported that the hostage escaped after the brothers stopped at a gas station on Memorial Drive to buy snacks. Did they think he'd have trouble with the lock? ...

Are we about to conclude that unless we drastically restrict our civil liberties, or profile and harass all Muslims, or severely curtail immigration, or all three, we're all going to die at the hands of THE ALL-POWERFUL TSARNAEV TERROR NETWORK? Because, yeah, they shed a hell of a lot of innocent blood, but either they got zero terrorist training -- my theory -- or they got terrible terrorist training, at least in the aspects of terrorism that didn't involve bomb construction.

So shudder in fear a little if you must, but get a grip: these guys weren't all that.