This weekend Obama made a completely unnecessary trip to Afghanistan to “thank the troops.” Given that Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to meet with him, one is left with the feeling that the trip was to divert attention from the burgeoning VA scandal that has killed dozens, if not hundreds, of veterans who were unwary enough to depend upon this administration for some semblance of competence.

But the administration was given an additional chance to demonstrated its utter incompetence. The White House outed the CIA’s chief of station in Kabul.

The name of the CIA’s top officer in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul was inadvertently exposed by the White House on Saturday.

The Washington Post first reported the misstep, saying the intelligence agent’s name was included on a list given to news organizations of senior U.S. officials taking part in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House realized what had happened and quickly issued a revised list without the person’s name on it.

The official “had been identified on the initial release as the ‘Chief of Station’ in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country,” according to the Post.

This level of incompetence is hard to come by. I suspect there is a special course at Harvard’s JFK School of Government that trains the best and brightest on how to pull this off.

Of course, the media is chuckling their way through it. That’s how they roll. A real CIA covert agent, whose life is actually made more difficult by being outed, is exposed and you get an “awwww, ain’t that cute” from the press. When an over-the-hill minor league non-player, here I am referring to Valerie Plame, gets her name mentioned it is a national disgrace.