Why don't the exchanges simply employ their very own miner to exclusively verify their own withdrawal transactions either before or at the same instant they are submitted to the bitcoin network thereby eliminating any timeframe in which malleability can take place?

What am I missing here?

I guess I need a little help understanding what to me seems obvious.

Why doesn't Gox just invest in some mining hardware dedicated exclusively to confirming only Gox withdrawals.  It seems to me that they could queue up all Gox withdrawals for processing to this new Gox miner, which when completed, the withdrawal transactions would show up in the blockchain the first time with one confirmation already in place.

Plus they'd get to keep all those pesky mining fees they keep deducting.... assuming they're not already doing this.

What am I missing here?

um.... yeah.... that would be panic that never in a million billion years would have occurred with the teeniest tiniest amount of transparency or explanation as to what was actually going on.... an explanation which we continue to wait for.  Perhaps the secrecy was to avoid looking incompetent and thereby losing the trust of the customers, but the secrecy itself has had the effect of.... yep, you guessed it.  Technical incompetence + customer service incompetence = sinking ship.

My several btc withdrawals made on Jan. 26 have all been returned to my Gox account so I guess they haven't disappeared entirely. (They didn't refund the withdrawal processing fee).

The skanner.net/mtgox/ site is down pending new API's from Gox.

thegoxreport.com is also down with a notice that it too is being rebuilt awaiting new api's from Gox.

My recent btc withdrawal attempts cannot proceed as Gox appears to be blocking all addresses whether valid or not.

In sum, it appears they are stopping all transfers and trying to start from ground zero which can't be bad since everything attempted previously, failed. A new approach was necessary. However, given their apparent competence levels, I don't think I'll hold my breath awaiting positive results from this latest gambit.