My problem loading the BITWhacker PIC32 from PICkit 2 is that it is not capable of doing so. MPLAB tells me that I need PM3, REAL ICE, ICD2, ICD3, or PICkit3.

MichaelS referring to PICkit3 said in a September 2010 entry:
# The application supports all devices supported in MPLAB 8.56 except PIC32. This is not to say it has been tested on all devices. If you have any problems programming any devices, please leave a note here or send me a PM.
# PIC32 support is coming very soon. I have stable support working in my current development builds.
See you in a week or so.
Ken