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Little Lynndie England, that dog-leash pulling, prisoner-taunting, trailer-park girl from West Virginia, is now officially on the list of great female evildoers of all time, a roll call dating all the way back to Eve.

By the time the Pentagon is done, at least judging from the tone and nature of U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his generals' testimony before House Armed Services Committee on Friday, this diminutive dominatrix of Iraqi prisoners, whose name and face is now known the world over, will be burned at the stake.

That's assuming she survives her public stoning.

I choose my words deliberately. Sexism is all over the Abu Ghraib prison coverage just as Rumsfeld is all over the thin ice he's skating on. Ask yourself: How many others caught in this abuse and torture uproar have been profiled by the media? How many others can you name? Or pick out of a line-up?

England become the anti-Jessica Lynch. She's this year's poster girl, the not-so-pretty one, made over for the now howling dogs of the press pack who so easily swallowed the Lynch rescue myth last year.

"Just like what happened with that Lynch girl, this is getting blown out of proportion," England's dad told The Baltimore Sun last week. "But in a negative way rather than a positive way."

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