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Most wanted Iraqi playing cards

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All 54 cards

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, the U.S. developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most wanted members of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. These were officially named the "personality identification playing cards".

Saddam Hussein as the Ace of Spades
See larger image

Each card contains the member's name, a picture, and the job performed by that individual, and are ranked in order of who was most wanted (with the ace being the highest). The ace of spades is Saddam Hussein. The ace of hearts is his son Uday, the ace of clubs is Saddam's son Qusay, and the ace of diamonds is the Saddam's presidential secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti[?].

Since soldiers often play card games in their leisure time, U.S. military leaders decided that putting information on playing cards would be a more effective to get information to coalition troops than just distributing an information bulletin.

Texas-based Liberty Playing Card Co. first manufactured the cards for wider distribution. The U.S. military inadvertently included in the jokers the trademarked Hoyle joker owned by The United States Playing Card Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. Although The U.S. Playing Card company does not object to the government's use of the image, they do object to other companies using the trademarked image. Thus, in some sense, the U.S. military inadvertently granted The U.S. Playing Card Company exclusive rights to manufacture the authentic decks, if the trademarked images on the jokers are considered a requirement for being authentic.

Table of contents

Spades

Clubs

Diamonds

Hearts

Other

There are also two jokers: one lists Arab titles, the other Iraqi military ranks.

See also: U.S. list of most wanted Iraqis

The Hoyle joker image is a trademark of the U.S. Playing Card Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, and its image is shown here to illustrate the entire official set. Its presentation here does not indicate any endorsement by the company.

Sources

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump