This time, Ann Coulter has set herself up for the kind of personal attack that's her specialty. In her latest frantic bid for attention, the right-wing pundit set her claws into the "Jersey Girls," Sept. 11 widows whose civic activism helped the nation find its bearings after the terrorist attack.

Without Kristen Breitweiser and her friends, there would have been no independent 9/11 Commission -- no formal inquiry into the blunders and blind spots that left the United States vulnerable. We'd still be completely in the dark about what happened, precisely why the Bush administration initially opposed it.

But Breitweiser and friends committed the unpardonable sin. They endorsed Sen. John Kerry for president. So here's what Coulter's latest cut-and-paste "book" says: "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's death so much."

In TV interviews, Coulter called the widows "harpies" and "witches," and said we don't know their husbands weren't preparing to dump them, and that they'd better pose for Playboy before they're too old. Of course, we also can't be sure that the never-married Coulter -- a 44-year-old smoker and boozer who's aging badly -- doesn't wear swastikas on her underwear.

Anyway here's my question: Is there a man alive, given a choice between dinner with Kristen Breitweiser or Ann Coulter, would choose Coulter?

Coulter of the fixed, demented glare, the insatiable need for attention and the strident air of superiority? Coulter, who shows up before 8 a.m. on the "Today" show wearing a skimpy cocktail dress to enhance her increasingly pathetic seductiveness? If such a man exists, he needs professional help.

The "Jersey Girls," intelligent women of substance, limited themselves to a brief, dignified statement: "Contrary to Ms. Coulter's statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day."

In their husbands' memory, they listed areas in which they believe the nation's defenses against terrorism remain unsatisfactory: loose nukes in Russia, and poor security at U.S. ports, chemical and nuclear plants. They avoided partisanship.

This column won't.

Some conservatives -- who praised Coulter's wit and effrontery when she lamented that Timothy McVeigh hadn't bombed The New York Times, joked about assassinating Supreme Court judges, and called for executing John Walker Lindh to intimidate liberals from becoming "outright traitors" -- say this time she's gone too far. Others criticize her manners but say she's got a point about people exploiting personal tragedy for political ends.

Coming from supporters of an administration that's used Sept. 11 to peddle everything from tax cuts for multimillionaires to its catastrophic bungling in Iraq, this is pretty rich. But there's a more important point: The only thing that's out of line about Coulter is her poor choice of victims. To many calling themselves "conservatives," America's real enemies are domestic. With presidential aide Karl Rove in the lead, the Republican right has consistently demonized liberal Democrats as traitors and worse.

During the potentially permanent "war on terror," the GOP has prosecuted a culture war, too. Let's recall Rove's words at a GOP fund-raiser: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. ... I am not joking."

No, as I wrote then -- he was fabricating. The House voted President Bush the authority to attack the Taliban and Al Qaeda by 420-1; the Senate voted 98-0.

There was principled Democratic resistance to Bush's "pre-emptive" invasion of Iraq, largely because, to put it bluntly, the French were right.

There's no getting around it. Had President Bush not prevented U.N. inspectors from completing their mission there, the nonexistence of Saddam's WMDs would have been proven, thousands of dead and maimed American soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqi civilians needn't have suffered, and we wouldn't be pouring trillions of tax dollars into a rat hole in the desert, along with this country's hard-won reputation as the democratic hope of the world.

But they don't want you thinking about that, so Limbaugh and his ilk are trying out the "stab in the back" slander to explain the disaster in Iraq. (See Kevin Baker's brilliant history of the idea in the June 2006 Harper's.) The "Drive-By Media," Limbaugh claims, are "ecstatic" over the alleged massacre in Haditha by U.S. Marines. Elsewhere, Democrats are depicted as unhappy about the death of criminal psychopath Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Like the "Jersey Girls," these are your friends, neighbors and countrymen these conservative crackpots are talking about. How long are you going to let them get away with it?

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.

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