Today's lead op-ed addresses a painfully sensitive issue: How guilty is the doctor at Abu Ghraib who approved the use of a leash on a psychotic prisoner? How culpable are he and the MPs at Abu Ghraib for this and other mistreatments, as opposed to the Army, which the authors claim "all but abdicated its responsibility to provide care to the thousands of people it kept in custody"? Illustrator Dan Page could have tiptoed through this assignment by drawing a doctor bag, a medical symbol, a prison cell or some other suggestive but inert object. Instead he aims straight at the emotional heart of the article: like authors (and Abu Ghraib investigators) M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks, he wants us to empathize with the prison doctors. He does a close up on a masked medic with eyes full of apprehension. The drawing has the woodcut-like verve of an old Japanese comic or war poster; Page even "weathers" the surface of the image to underscore the historicism. The camo on the doctor's mask and cap is a bit odd—scrubs wouldn't be camo-patterned—but we get the message of conflicting medical and military imperatives. Best op-ed illo since I started this blog.
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