THE REAL WILSON SCANDAL: Forget Valerie Plame, the big scandal is why anyone in the Bush Administration would ever have tasked a guy with Wilson’s views with an important mission.

Regardless of the rest of the story, heads should roll for that.

UPDATE: Darren Kaplan wonders if Wilson’s hiring was legal in light of anti-nepotism laws. I don’t know, but surely his publicly expressed views made him unsuitable regardless of his relations.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Randy Paul emails to suggest that I’m “smearing” Wilson above. But it’s an attack on the competence of the White House, not on Wilson. Wilson’s free to hold those views. But only an idiot would pick someone like that for a politically sensitive mission of great importance. Either (1) Wilson had a sudden epiphany on the war, which I strongly doubt; or (2) He felt this way when they picked him, and they either didn’t know (bad) or didn’t care (bad). Regardless, this reflects very badly on the White House’s judgment. And unlike other parts of this affair, we don’t need additional facts to figure it out.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon agrees:

Who were the Adminstration leakers but, more importantly, who in the CIA authorized Wilson’s strange, off-budget, journey to Niger and why? Why is this more important? Because it could show people in our own intelligence agencies working against the wishes of our government, not just standard-issue partisan battling that goes on every day inside the Beltway.

Indeed.