It’s not a huge surprise that Fox News hired Allen West as a contributor. Any regular Fox watcher could see that West has been angling for the job since he lost his seat in Congress (and finally acknowledged it with what has to be one of the least gracious concessions ever). But what is surprising, even for an outfit as maliciously divisive as Fox News, is that they would cite West’s disgraced military career as one of his selling points.

The Washington Post reports:

“Representative West’s congressional and military experience along with his fearless approach to voicing key issues will provide a valuable point of view to the FOX News lineup,” Fox News Vice President Bill Shine said in a statement. West served in the army before running for Congress in 2010.

You have to wonder which part of West’s military experience Fox thinks will prove so valuable. His mistreatment of an Iraqi prisoner that nearly got him court martialed? From CNN:

The case stems from an incident August 20 at a military base in Taji, just north of Baghdad, when West was interrogating an Iraqi policeman, who was believed to have information about a plot to assassinate West with an ambush on a U.S. convoy.

In testimony at an Article 32 hearing—the military’s version of a grand jury or preliminary hearing—West said the policeman, Yahya Jhrodi Hamoody, was not cooperating with interrogators, so he watched four of his soldiers from the 220^th Field Artillery Battalion beat the detainee on the head and body.

West said he also threatened to kill Hamoody. Military prosecutors say West followed up on that threat by taking the suspect outside, put him on the ground near a weapons clearing barrel and fired his 9 mm pistol into the barrel.

The Nation reported that no evidence was ever found implicating Hamoody.

Or does Fox admire how West was fined $5,000 and avoided court martial by retiring?

As for what Fox calls West’s “fearless approach to voicing key issues,” others might call it hate-mongering a la Glenn Beck. West is the guy who, as Politico reported, “channeled Joe McCarthy in a town hall event in Florida (by saying) that he’s ‘heard’ that up to 80 House Democrats are Communist Party members, the Palm Beach Post reports.” Or, as Mother Jones wrote:

He has suggested that Democratic leaders—whom he calls “chicken men”—“get the hell out of the United States of America”; considers drivers with Obama bumper stickers “a threat to the gene pool”; and says black Democrats are trying to keep his fellow African Americans “on the plantation”—and he’s the “modern-day Harriet Tubman” helping them to escape.

Whatever the appeal, there’s every reason West will be a good fit at Fox despite the fact that he has all the personality and charm of a Dick Cheney. If nothing else, as Eric Hananoki, at Media Matters wrote in a great column listing eight reasons why West is the perfect Fox News contributor. he’s a former Republican official. That, by the way, was Reason Number One on Hananoki's list.

So I’m looking forward to a long, happy marriage between West and Fox. Just so long as he doesn't think any of his Fox colleagues are plotting against him.