LED ON A LEASH

THE ABUSE AND TORTURE of detainees committed by
military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison were detailed in
the Taguba Report, an official Army military inquiry conducted
in early 2004. But it took a CBS report and a story in The New
Yorker by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh
to break the story to the country. For months, artists sketched,
trying to understand and digest the unbearably shocking images
that had been thrust into the public consciousness. It often felt

more like an attempt at exorcism than at getting published. Barry Blitt didn’t shy away from
the totally outrageous when he drew Lynddie England (right) as a typical New York dog walker
flashing a thumbs-up signal. Richard McGuire’s painting (opposite) depicts the waterboarding of
an upside-down prisoner. The scene, whose composition is inspired by Old Master paintings of
the Deposition of Christ, is portrayed as emotionless and anonymous: Torturers wear hoods, and
everyone’s face, save for a medieval scribe’s, is hidden.

MARCELLUS HALL’S reaction was
typical of many other artists’. His first
sketch of Bush holding the leash on Un-
cle Sam (top) spoke of the shame many
felt when they saw the photos—though
that image was too close to a political
cartoon to work well as a cover. He later
sent a sketch of Bush as Don Quixote
(above), which was considered, so he did
a finish (right). In that version, it’s now
Bush who is led on a leash by Cheney.

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