READER RICHARD AUBREY writes to explain why nobody took the lessons about FBI ineptitude that the Ruby Ridge and Waco debacles made plain:

The reason the FBI got away with that is that nobody cared. Not just the FBI. Nobody in the media, the chattering classes, the universities, gave a rodent’s patootie about this. You will recall the WaPo’s view of Pentacostals and Fundamentalists? Poor, dumb, and easily led. When the doo-doo hit the fan, their excuse (the first attempt) was that they were only saying what everybody knew. What happened on Ruby Ridge and at Waco was no more than those people deserved, was the general view. You could get called a redneck really, really, quickly if you mentioned something about Vicki Weaver.

So the FBI had nothing to worry about. My guess is they probably knew it. Now, even looking at a mosque while driving by…. That’s a different story.

This is probably right. Sadly, if you look at it rationally, the smart thing to do was nothing. Go arrest a bunch of Arabs and turn out to be wrong — or just unable to prove beyond any doubt that you were right — in predicting that they were going to commit a gigantic terrorist attack, and you’d lose your job for sure. Fail to arrest them, and . . . um, well, nobody’s lost a job over this yet, right?