FayetteNow

Now free after 18 months in prison for her role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, Lynndie England says she can’t get a job, or even leave her house out of fear she’ll be judged.

England, whose biography just came out, has apologized for her actions many times … but with a catch:

“They think that I was like this evil torturer. … I wasn’t,” she says. “People don’t realize I was just in a photo for a split second in time.”

I’ll buy that, personally, for what it’s worth – more a tale of weakness and poor judgment than of pure evil.

Her biographer isn’t so sure:

“Some days I liked her. Some days I hated her,” he says. “Some days I thought she should be in prison still, and some days I felt sorry for her.”

I didn’t meet England but I did see her up close a number of times while I was covering her military hearings in 2004. She was pregnant at the time (an uncharitable colleague said “she looks like a pregnant boy”). Now she has to take care of a four-year-old son with no job, limited mobility … and wonder what the kid’s friends at school will be saying in a few years.

The Associated Press article on a West Virginia newspaper site