The Nader Effect

As the LA Times reports in its analysis today, John Kerry’s campaign strategy on Iraq has come under fire from both sides, as George Bush continues to push for greater international involvement in Iraqi reconstruction and Nader stumps for withdrawal, an option increasingly popular with Kerry’s base:

From one side, Kerry confronts calls from growing numbers of Democrats to establish a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. That idea will receive a major boost today when Win Without War, a coalition of 42 liberal groups, launches a campaign urging the U.S. to set a date for ending its military presence in Iraq.
From the other direction, Bush has come much closer to Kerry’s view that the U.S. should rely more on the United Nations to oversee the transition from occupation to a sovereign Iraqi government, thus blurring the contrast between the two men.
In the long run, these shifts in Democratic attitudes and Bush’s strategy may pressure Kerry to break more sharply from the administration on Iraq, a step he has firmly resisted.

The Times reports that 53% of Democrats now favor the cut-and-run strategy, even if it means civil war in Iraq. Of course, Nader pushes this option as his policy, intending on draining Kerry from the left (and possibly picking off a few America-First Republicans from Bush if he can). Kerry’s strategy for Iraq has never been clear, which is another problem for his campaign. All he’s done over the past several months is complain about “fraudulent coalitions” while Italian and Polish troops die alongside Americans and Brits, while offering no specific changes in Bush’s approach other than to “formally rejoin the community of nations”. Now all of that, er, nuance comes back to bite Kerry as Bush arranges for more UN involvement, such as the Brahimi mission to certify Iraq’s sovereignty and establish a basis for representative government.
The Times echoes my long-established argument that Kerry’s lack of convictions will inevitably rebound against him, especially in a three-way race. While Dean imploded spectacularly in the winter, Democrats saw Kerry as the electable candidate, a seasoned pol with glittering medals who could challenge Bush on foreign policy. Kerry encouraged this by adjusting his rhetoric to match that of the firebrand Dean on the war, leading his constituency to believe that Kerry had decided to bail out of Iraq. Lo and behold, however, the country as a whole did not like the notion of running away, perhaps unhappy with the news coming from Iraq but unwilling to surrender the entire nation to the fanatics. Kerry has since tried moving back to the center but is now caught between the pull of the leftists and the determination of the centrists.
Now he faces two options, neither of which look particularly attractive. On one hand, he could change his position and start calling for unilateral withdrawal from Iraq and hope to push Nader out of the race. Besides being catastrophic policy for the US, though, it opens Kerry to charges of flip-flopping yet again on this issue and demonstrates a lack of will that may unnerve the centrists and independents in November. On the other hand, he could stand pat and watch as Nader continues to drain his base from the Bush-hating left, if not of tremendous amounts of votes, certainly of funding and enthusiasm, a quality he hardly inspires anyway. Perhaps he could fire up enthusiasm on economic policy, a la Clinton, but that’s unlikely in the midst of an economic expansion.
If nothing else, Kerry is a political tactician — after all, he’s drafted behind Ted Kennedy most of his career, using the senior Massachussetts Senator to draw fire while he votes to Kennedy’s left. I predict Kerry will announce at the convention that he now favors withdrawal in order to garner a Nader endorsement for the general election, and gamble that the transfer of power produces an increase in violence that will overcome the disgust of retreat that centrists and independents will surely feel.

NYT: Abu Ghraib MPs Chronic Discipline Problems

I have repeatedly asserted that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses resulted from a lack of discipline in the unit and the command, not from some sort of insidious conspiracy to humiliate Iraqis. Now the New York Times reports this morning that three of the seven soldiers involved in the abuse scandal had long histories of poor discipline, including Spec. Charles Graner, considered to be the ringleader:

In the six months leading up to the investigation of prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, three of the seven soldiers now charged with abuse repeatedly committed infractions and disobeyed orders but received only the mildest of punishments.
Their violations of military rules included entering buildings they had been ordered to avoid, continuing improper sexual relations with one another and being aggressive with detainees, according to records obtained by The New York Times. … Among [Taguba’s] concerns were flippant comments in logbooks, lack of standards for uniforms and soldiers who wrote poems and other sayings on their headgear. General Taguba also raised concerns about officers and senior noncommissioned officers who had been disciplined for drinking, taking nude pictures of soldiers without their knowledge and fraternizing with junior soldiers.

Graner refused a direct order seven times in one incident, and inviting his sergeant when he finally complied to “kiss his ass”. Sgt. Javal Davis built a reputation for abusive behavior but his command failed to confront him, and as the Times reports, the warden, Captain Donald Reese, finally removed him from the prison but never initiated disciplinary action. Pvt. Lynndie England, who has made a name for herself as the Jessica Cutler of the Army Reserves, received three reprimands in four months and finally a demotion two months after that for refusing to stop having sexual relations with Graner:

She was instructed to sleep in her own bed and to address officers properly and was told that she could not be in Specialist Graner’s building except “through the day and to watch movies.” She was ordered into corrective training for 10 days. Private England refused to sign a counseling form.
In November she was reported missing for two days. She was found in Specialist Graner’s cot. Again she was counseled for refusing direct orders and was told to sleep in her own bed. Captain Reese then ordered her, on Jan. 1, to forfeit $357 of her pay.
The next morning, Specialist Graner was seen leaving her room in Building 100. Sgt. First Class Larry Bennett told him to leave the area. Specialist Graner, he said, refused several times.
“He advised, `I should escort him, since I wasn’t doing anything,’ ” Sergeant Bennett wrote. “I then advised him this was an order to leave the building. He finally left the building, and on the way out he told me, `You can kiss my [behind].’ “

Nor was the lack of discipline and oversight confined to the overnight shift at Abu Ghraib. When General Geoffrey Miller toured Iraq in order to provide some consultancy on interrogations and intelligence work based on his command in Guantanamo, officers noticed that even at the Abu Ghraib commander’s office, discipline was notably lacking:

Walking through Camp Cropper, a detention center, with Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, the brigade’s commander, General Miller encountered two military police soldiers sitting at their desks with their feet up, not so much as budging as the two-star general walked by. “It was shocking,” said the officer.

People laugh at military discipline, or worse, consider it some sort of fascistic spectacle which undermines democracy. Abu Ghraib, hopefully, will put that fantasy to rest. The military (regardless of nationality) controls great force and when applied in battle condition can hold the power of life and death, not only against the enemy but with anyone in its vicinity and with each other. In order to effectively control that power so that it is used properly and as intended by political and military command, military units must remained highly disciplined and trained to respond without hesitation.
When a “Casual Fridays” mentality is allowed to seep into fighting units, you inevitably see breakdowns such as this, with usually disastrous results. (See France, 1939-40, for one example of what happens when discipline breaks down.) Military command must, as Job 1, maintain proper discipline in order to keep people from perverting their authority into disgusting spectacles like we have seen at Abu Ghraib. Without a doubt, this embarrassment started with a lackadaisacal approach to order which seems to have started at the command level of Abu Ghraib, where offences were lightly punished, if at all, and the crispness of military decorum was discarded in favor of putting one’s feet up and taking it easy.
The solution is to replace officers in Iraq with those who will instill proper discipline into their units to prevent soldiers from going out of control, for their own good as well as ours. We should also explore the possibility of replacing reservists with career units in Iraq for sensitive assignments like high-value prison duty to ensure that orders are properly executed.

Telegraph: Abu Hamza To Be Extradited To US

The London Telegraph reports this morning that Abu Hamza, a radical muslim cleric linked to Britons held in Guantanamo, has been arrested in a dawn raid and will soon be extradited to the US:

Police were acting on an extradition warrant issued by the US government: it is thought the US authorities plan to charge him with terror-related offences. … According to The Sun, the preacher faces deportation to the US on terror charges. The newspaper also claimed that sources in Washington revealed that the extradition process has been under way in secret for weeks.

While this article does not detail the charges pending against Hamza, an earlier Telegraph article from February reported that the US wanted Hamza in relation to al-Qaeda recruitment activity in Oregon:

The American authorities are understood to be close to presenting a formal request for Hamza’s extradition to face accusations contained in US court papers that he conspired to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and recruited young men to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
A new Anglo-American extradition treaty, which removes the requirement for the US to produce prima facie evidence of an offence, came into force on Jan 1.
US officials hope they can use the new treaty to extradite Hamza without the long delays that continue to hamper other requests – including three suspected al-Qa’eda members who have been in jail here [in the UK] since 1998 while they contest US extradition warrants.

Apparently, the new treaty worked, and Hamza will return to the US soon to face federal terrorism charges. I presume that the US will use the civil courts rather than a military tribunal since Hamza was not captured on the battlefield or in action while conducting terrorist activity, but the news reports do not address that. Either way, we can expect that Hamza’s arrival will be met with the usual protests from the usual people regarding Hamza’s loss of civil liberties, complete with Amnesty International hyperbole as we saw yesterday, claiming that America’s war on terror has been the worst thing that ever happened to human rights — a viewpoint that would only have a glimmer of hope of being true if one managed to sleep through the entire 20th century.

WSJ: Another Saddam-AQ Link Discovered

Two days after ABC News reported, deep into a story on Abu al-Zarqawi, that the al-Qaeda operative and beheader of Nick Berg had received support, shelter, and arms from Saddam Hussein at least as far back as “late 2002”, the Wall Street Journal discovers another link to Islamofascists and Saddam Hussein. In this case, the terrorist in question has long been suspected of having involvement in 9/11 and now appears to be a commander in the Saddam Fedayeen:

One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam’s son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime’s dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda “summit” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.

As their lead editorial on OpinionJournal.com states, Shakir is well known not only to the US, but became a global celebrity of sorts early on in the war on terror. Shakir attended the infamous summit meeting in Malaysia in January 2001, where the attendees included the operational commander of 9/11 (Ramzi bin al-Shibh), a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant who ran the USS Cole operation, and two of the 9/11 “pilots” who took Flight 77 into the side of the Pentagon. After 9/11, Shakir resurfaced in Qatar the week after 9/11 with phone numbers to various terrorist groups involved in 9/11, WTC I, and other information.
At that point, the Qatarians arrested him, and then almost as quickly released him to Jordan, where he was arrested again. For some reason, Amnesty International made a huge public stink about his being held without charges, and the Iraq government — Saddam’s government — pressured Jordan to release Shakir. The CIA failed to understand Shakir’s significance at the time and made no protest, so Jordan released Shakir, who promptly flew to Baghdad. Up to now, he has not resurfaced.
Now Shakir shows up on three Saddam Fedayeen rosters with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, a command rank that indicates significant involvement with Saddam’s regime. His presence in Iraq, 18 months prior to the Anglo-American-led invasion, demonstrates Saddam’s interaction and support for Islamofascist terrorists, and probably more than that. After all, in the wake of 9/11, with everyone looking for an Iraqi connection, it was hardly a propitious time to publicly take in an AQ terrorist just for the sheer thrill of it. If Saddam wanted him back that badly, it had to be for more reason than to trade American epithets and play a little backgammon in the palace.
UPDATE: Our Northern Alliance colleague, Hindrocket, also provides analysis on this article at Power Line:

Iraq was, to a degree that is still unknown, involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. It now appears that Saddam had a hand in the 2001 attack as well. The only doubt at this point would appear to be the possibility that the “Ahmed Hikmat Shakir” who was an officer in the Fedayeen might be a different person with the same name as the al Qaeda operative who helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks. If I were a member of the administration, I would devote a great deal of effort to investigating Col. Shakir, and tracking him down if he is still alive.

Just as long as we don’t offend the sensitive natures at Amnesty International in doing so, I suppose.

Gore Goes Mad

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John Podhoretz thinks Al Gore is bonkers. In today’s New York Post he describes Gore’s speech as a public mental meltdown:
“I mean that based on his behavior, conduct, mien and tone over the past two days, there is every reason to believe that Albert Gore Jr., desperately needs help. I think he needs medication, and I think that if he is already on medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely.”
From the ill-conceived Faustian reference to the “American Gulag” analogy, Gore’s speech was a barely-coherent mass of bitterness.
Mr. Podhoretz concludes:
“Gore’s speech is the single craziest political performance of my lifetime, and I use the word “craziest” advisedly. The speech, at 6,600 words, was twice as long as Bush’s address to the nation on Monday night. The indiscipline shown by the sheer endlessness of Gore’s address is a reflection of the psychic morass in which he has become mired.”
Let’s all take a collective sigh of relief that Mr. Gore was not our commander in chief on 11 September 2001.

Have you seen these people?

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According to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Al Qaeda is close to launching a major attack, these seven individuals may be involved. The AP reports that a steady stream of “disturbing” intelligence indicates terrorists already are already in the United States and ready to execute the plan, though Mr. Ashcroft acknowledged there is no information indicating when, where or how an attack might happen.
In today’s news conference, Mr. Ashcroft declared, “We do believe that al-Qaida plans to attack the United States, and that is a result of intelligence that is corroborated at a variety of levels.”
The AP reports:
“Six of the al-Qaida operatives, including two Canadian citizens, whose photos and backgrounds were highlighted Wednesday have been the subject of FBI pursuit for months. The seventh, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, 25, is a U.S. citizen who grew up on a California goat farm and converted to Islam as a teenager. He was described by Mueller as having attended al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan (news – web sites) and served as an al-Qaida translator. ”
“Each of the suspects, Ashcroft said, presents ‘a clear and present danger’ to the United States because of their language skills, familiarity with U.S. culture and ability to travel under multiple aliases and use forged documents.”
Of course, the AP notes the obligatory of Democrat complaints: if this is such a big deal, why haven’t they raised the threat level, and the Bush administration is “needlessly scaring people.”
“Needlessly scaring people”! They are doing their job, warning people about the danger before it is too late to stop it. Awareness, even some fear, will keep us alert and watchful.
Kerry’s response was typically nonresponsive. According to AP, he “questioned the Bush administration’s commitment to providing the resources necessary to protect the country, citing gaps in chemical and nuclear plant safety and inadequate protection for U.S. ports.”
I love the way the AP skips critical information to save room to quote the virulently anti-Bush crowd.

Peace Comes To Sudan?

The longest current war may be coming to a close. The London Telegraph reports that the Bush and Blair administrations scored a foreign-policy victory by pushing the warring factions to the bargaining table in the Sudan, resulting in a tentative peace agreement:

A peace deal to end Africa’s longest civil war was finally signed last night. The fighting in Sudan, which has raged intermittently for nearly 50 years, has claimed two million lives. … The conclusion of the fraught negotiations – in which the two sides have come under intense pressure from the United States – hands President George W Bush a rare foreign-policy boost in a Muslim country. …
A transitional government headed by President Omar alBashir will take charge later this year. His fiercest enemy, John Garang, commander of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, will become vice-president.
North and south will split oil revenues equally and both sides will be represented in parliament, the civil service and the judiciary. After six years southerners will vote in a referendum offering them the option of independence.

The Sudan has fought a civil war since their independence from Britain in 1956, and as the Telegraph points out, has remained so economically disadvantaged that not one inch of tarmac nor one watt of electricity exists in the southern, non-Muslim rebel areas of the country. The Sudan has oil reserves which could transform the nation into economic viability if their politics could ever get straightened out.
So now we have the Anglo-American alliance liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, convincing Libya to cough up its WMD programs, engaging North Korea in the multi-lateral talks that were supposedly out of reach, and now they’ve helped end a 50-year war that kept millions in poverty and violence. What exactly do the Democrats have to say about George Bush’s foreign policy?

Well, If It’s Not Too Much Trouble

John Kerry has deigned to accept the nomination for the Democratic presidential ticket at the nominating convention, apparently deciding that playing games with both his hometown power base and the $15 million in federal funding would be too stupid, even for his campaign:

Bowing to pressure, John Kerry decided Wednesday to accept the nomination at the Democratic presidential convention in July, scuttling a plan to delay the formality so he could narrow President Bush’s public money advantage. … The statement ended four days of controversy over an idea that was supposed to remain a secret for several more weeks.

This ends yet another tone-deaf episode for John Kerry and his campaign staff, who demonstrated that they have no talent for national politics, and possibly even state and local politics are beyond them. Not only is this illustrated by the entire foolish notion of delaying the acceptance of the nomination, but also in the way this idea was fumbled throughout its blessedly short life. The Post reports that the proposal leaked far earlier than anyone anticipated, while Kerry considered its benefits and drawbacks, leaving the campaign completely unprepared to deal with the damage:

Several Kerry advisers had wanted him to forgo the nomination at the Democratic convention in late July and wait five weeks until Bush accepts the Republican nod. That would give both candidates the same time to spend $75 million in public money set aside for the general election. But the plan leaked weeks before Kerry had intended, causing an uproar in his home town of Boston — site of the July 26-29 convention — and among Democrats who feared that voters would view the tactic as too political.
Kerry had planned to wait several weeks before deciding what to do, but word of his deliberations leaked last week, forcing his hand.

Rather than respond to the leak with a prompt yes-or-no decision, Kerry stayed true to form and vacillated for several days, refusing to make a decision while Boston stewed and the FEC talked about legal action. Even up to yesterday, Kerry refused to make a decision but engaged in laughable rationalizations for a possible delay, citing Woodrow Wilson (1912) and Harry Truman (1948) as examples:

“Once again, the Republicans don’t know history, and they don’t know facts,” he said. “The truth is that it used to be that the convention, after nomination, traveled to the home or the state of the nominee to inform them they’ve been nominated. Woodrow Wilson was at his house in Princeton, N.J.; Harry Truman was in Independence,” Mo., he said. “They’re trying to make an issue out of something that they’re surprised by, because . . . they’re very upset someone might have a way of neutralizing their advantage.”

Of course, now that we’ve invented television and the internet, having a candidate live a thousand miles from the convention no longer presents a problem like that faced by Woodrow Wilson. Perhaps someone should inform Kerry about the marvelous changes in communication technology we enojy since 1948. On the other hand, someone should also tell the senator from Massachussetts that Boston is where he lives. How is that analogous to Truman’s nomination?
Besides, the issue that Kerry needs to overcome by delaying the nomination is entirely self-inflicted. His party pushed for campaign-finance reform, and his party selected their July convention date in order to take advantage of it when they thought they’d be running out of cash at mid-summer. Now that the circumstances have changed, the Kerry campaign can’t take responsibility for their own choices and instead flirts with breaking rules in order to nullify rules that they created!
Now we’ll get a ration of Kerry acting magnanimous the next few days while reminding us that Bush and the Republicans have an “unfair” advantage, while they try to kick sand over this debacle. Just remember that the Democrats, and the Kerry campaign in particular, handed the Republicans this advantage through their incompetence and their Machiavellian scheming.

Reuters, critics recommend decreased vigilence

The quack reporters at Reuters and their useful idiots would like us to believe the new terror threats are politically motivated.
“A vague new U.S. warning that al Qaeda may be planning a massive attack smacks of political back-covering and campaigning, not just a call for heightened vigilance, analysts and former government officials say.”
“Stung by accusations that the Bush administration ignored key intelligence in the run-up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials may now be issuing warnings to prove to Americans they are on the ball this time, say terrorism analysts on both sides of the political fence.”
“Apparently there were warnings over 9/11 and nothing came out to the public before that, and they’ve paid a dear price for that,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They need to alert the public that there could be something coming down the pike, in which case, don’t say we didn’t tell you,” he said.
And there’s more:
“One former national security official in the Bush administration told Reuters: “This is more butt-covering than anything else.”
So someone who was either fired or quit their job wants to tell us what the President and his advisers are really doing. That’s persuasive.
This should all just be a matter of common sense. We have huge events coming up this summer: the party conventions, Olympic Games, and the G8 summit. Three of those will be held in the U.S. Al Qaeda demonstrated both willingness and capability to violently insert itself into a state’s political process in March (Spain).
The 2004 election will set the course for the War Against Democracy. If President Bush loses, Kerry will submit to the terrorists and cease any offensive measures. Al Qaeda knows that more rides on this election than any other event for the next 4 years!
Officials also complain that there are no specific guidelines for what the public should do. Look, if they knew what the threat was, law enforcement/military would take care of it. When you don’t know, the only thing you can do is to urge increased vigilience and awareness. Those tactics work; if you know something bad is going to happen, you might find that 20 year-old Muslim guy in the trench coat with wires hanging out just a little more suspicious than you would otherwise and perhaps alert the police. If we are led to believe things are just fine, we will follow our natural impulse to hurry to work and just forget about him.
Finally, there is a lot of nonsense buried at the end of this article.
“One prominent terrorism expert, who would only speak on condition of anonymity, said Bush may also be trying to staunch increasing criticism of the Iraq campaign by underlining the link in the public’s mind between Iraq and security at home. ‘The president is running as a war president, so the timing is interesting,’ he said, pointing to a speech by Bush on Monday that made frequent references to terrorist threats.”
“‘I wonder if there’s not a connection to the president’s speech when he mentioned terrorism 18 times in the context of Iraq. Isn’t this a very convenient way of linking back to the United States that Iraq is part of the broader war on terrorism?’ he said.”
President Bush is a war president. Whoever is elected in November will also be a war president, though Kerry, if elected, will not want to admit it. The war is against the US, and we will remain at war whether or not we fight back.

Malkin: DC’s Double-Ws Libertines, Not Liberated

I’ve mostly avoided the entire Washingtoniette fracas that erupted on Wonkette’s blog because I don’t normally comment on sex blogs (and don’t make a habit of reading them, either). Regardless of whether the interpersonal relations are located in the halls of power in Washington DC or in the cornfields of Nebraska, does it really shock us in this age that people get promiscuous, both in their sexual habits and their inability to remain discreet about it? I blog on politics for the most part, but blogs exist to talk about whatever interests the writer. For Jessica Cutler, what interested her was her numerous and concurrent sexual flings with co-workers, including the cash “gifts” received for a few of these encounters.
However, Michelle Malkin — a real journalist, as opposed to Cutler — wrote a terrific piece for today’s Townhall edition, explaining why this episode in the blogosphere damages the credibility of women in the workplace, especially in the political world of DC:

Meet the new Monica Lewinsky. Jessica Cutler, a 24-year-old mailroom clerk and phone receptionist, worked for Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, until last Friday — when he fired her for using Senate computers to post to an Internet Web log that chronicled her trysts with six different men in Washington. Cutler’s partners reportedly included government officials who gave her money for her sexual services.
Diary excerpt: “I just took a long lunch with F and made a quick $400. When I returned to the office, I heard that my boss was asking about my whereabouts. Loser.” In another entry, Cutler explains: “F(equals)Married man who pays me for sex. Chief of Staff at one of the gov agencies, appointed by Bush.”
Cutler, who aspired to be a journalist, spouted: “I’m sure I am not the only one who makes money on the side this way: How can anybody live on $25K/year??” When I was 24 and making less than that, I did it by eating Spaghetti-O’s, Ramen noodles and Swanson pot pies for dinner; driving a Toyota Tercel with no air conditioning; and sleeping on a $30 futon. I did it the way most parents teach their daughters to succeed: through hard work, thrift, faith and perseverance.

This bimblog eruption occurs at a difficult time for women in another male-dominated arena — the military. The photographed and videotaped sexual exploits of Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib have touched off a debate about the feasibility of putting women into combat support areas, especially in reserve units where discipline may not be as good as regular military units. Now we find out that Cutler supplemented her income by prostituting herself out to co-workers, not only disrupting workplaces with her antics but also making a mockery of the super-legalized “safe working environments” that we in the private sector must maintain.
Malkin talks about Cutler and Ana Marie “Wonkette” Cox as the female version of Beavis and Butthead illustrating the “narcissism, moral bankruptcy and self-congratulatory media-political incest” that people detest about DC. She resents, and rightly so, all of the prime-time play that the pair have received just for the one whoring herself out to co-workers and the other incessantly promoting it — and acting surprised when Cutler got fired for it. Malkin also notes that the press, which spills tons of ink and fires off infinite electrons ridiculing family values, trips all over themselves to sell those who would sell themselves:

Follow-up dispatches appeared in Roll Call, the New York Post, the London Independent, United Press International and the Associated Press, whose wire reports on Cutler were reprinted everywhere from the Akron Beacon Journal to the Houston Chronicle to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. … The Washington Post’s legitimization of this shallow “story” illustrates something else: the mainstream media’s perverted moral values. The paper’s recent profiles and features of social conservatives drip with condescension and ridicule. Religious activists are portrayed as intolerant homophobes; Republicans as gun-toting rubes; abstinence promoters as freaks.
But give The Washington Post two vain, young, trash-mouthed skanks who couldn’t care less about what their parents think of their sex-drenched infamy, and the newspaper can’t wait to help make them full-fledged members of the media elite.

Malkin is not the only one sick to death over the glamorization of trash. Bloggers have also made their displeasure known over the attention that Cutler and Cox received. Bill at INDC Journal, who lives in the middle of this Beltway sensation, has blogged extensively on just how sick of the entire meme he’s become:

… this post is not sour grapes that stem from traffic envy or misdirected sexual desire for the W’s, it’s my aversion to shameful whoring and manipulation, in both the literal and media incarnations. When prostitution becomes cool/celebrated/admirable, what the hell is left in the taboo column? I guess that I’m more of a social conservative than I realize … or I just can’t stand such obvious cheap and easy media manipulation; mostly because it’s so blatant. This from a guy whose bread and butter are moonbat jokes. Go figure.

For balance, the Commissar from Politburo Diktat takes the long view, even dropping out of character a little to explain how the ultimate female capitalist, so to speak, has made the blogosphere a bit bigger, and advises Bill and perhaps myself to live with it:

In the Blogosphere (VRWC bloggers, take note), she has accomplished the same feat. (I’ll digress briefly to note that Ana Marie Cox is a self-proclaimed, albeit tongue-in-cheek “big fat Commie pinko.” Despite her claim to ridicule whomever needs ridiculing, on any side, her views show through.) So far, the Left side of the blogosphere has been limited to those Krugman-on-steroids, relentless & humorless Bush-haters, modern Savonarolas, sufferers from & purveyors of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), like dKos, Atrios, Max Sawicky, and the rest. The VRWC has had a monopoly on entertaining, irreverent bloggers: Lileks, Scrappleface, Misha, Allah, Iowahawk, and Wizbang, to name a few.
Like her or not, comrades, Wonkette has pushed her way into the A-List. 140,000 hits daily for the past week. That may not be sustained, but it’s no one-day Instalanche. Maybe she backed her way into it, ass-first, if you like, but that is the “world as we find it.” Sorry, Comrade Bill, but we too, must “take it.”
The blogosphere is bigger than it was a week ago, thanks to two Washington chick bloggers who “take it.”

Just to underscore the point, the Commissar provides pictures of the two Ws in suggestive, pseudolesbian poses as well as a screenshot of their appearance on Fox News.
I agree with the Commissar — it’s a big blogosphere, and it’s not just the VWRC that can have fun with it. I still think it’s a shame, as Malkin says, that so much attention is wasted on two young women who have done little except to prove that the world’s oldest profession has remained profitable.