The Problems Associated with Connecting the Dots

Mark Lombardi's art career was just beginning to soar when he reportedly hanged himself in his New York apartment. Because Mark's work dealt with international conspiracies (his exhibitions have been notoriously visited by the FBI and others) and showing how certain leaders were connected to them, speculation ran rampant in the art world that he had been "silenced" by someone who stood to be exposed in his next piece. I knew Mark and, having talked with his girlfriend after his death, I'm 99% sure he did take his own life back in 2000. Still, his work does resonate long past his life...

Here's a detail of one of his drawings, titled "George W. Bush, Harken Energy, and Jackson Stevens c.1979-90, 5th Version" (click on it to visit his gallery's website):

I was reminded of Mark's work by this New York Times story about the Pentagon's Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group's work in the months after 9/11:

They recorded and annotated their evidence on butcher paper hung like a mural around their small office. By the end of the year, as the rubble was being cleared from the World Trade Center and United States forces were fighting in Afghanistan, the men had constructed a startling new picture of global terrorism.

Old ethnic, religious and political divides between terrorist groups were breaking down, the two men warned, posing an ominous new threat. They saw alliances among a wide range of Islamic terrorists, and theorized about a convergence of Sunni and Shiite extremist groups and secular Arab governments. Their conclusions, delivered to senior Bush administration officials, connected Iraq and Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

The CIA still largely dimisses their findings, but when first presented to the Administration, they reportedly had an impact:

Whether its findings influenced the thinking of policy makers or merely provided talking points that buttressed long-held views, the unit played a role in the administration's evolving effort to define the threat of Iraq — and sell it to the public.

I haven't seen their butcher paper murals, myself, but I imagine they might have looked like one of Mark's drawings...say the one above....which could be used, by someone with an agenda to do so, to connect George Bush to bin Laden.

It's a silly way to decide policy, even if it makes for good art.

Comments

[asdf]

OT, for Edward.

They're a little more worried about mercury than I was before reading it.