1st Playing Cards

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During the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of President Saddam Hussein's government, mostly high-ranking members of the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party or members of the Revolutionary Command Council; among them were some of Hussein's family members. The cards were officially named the 'personality identification playing cards'. As of 2021, all but 4 of the 52 most wanted have been either killed or captured, eleven of whom have been released.

About the cards[edit]

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Each card contains the wanted person's address and, if available, the job performed by that individual. The highest-ranking cards, starting with the aces and kings, were used for the people at the top of the most-wanted list. The ace of spades is Saddam Husayn, the aces of clubs and hearts are his sons Qusay and Uday respectively, and the ace of diamonds is Saddam's presidential secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti. This strict correspondence to the order of the most-wanted list was not carried through the entire deck, but sometime later in 2003, the list itself was renumbered to conform (almost) to the deck of cards. The card backs feature camouflage reminiscent of that seen on the Desert Camouflage Uniform.

According to US NavyLieutenant commander Jim Brooks, a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, such playing cards have been used as far back as the US Civil War and again in World War II—Army Air Corps decks printed with the silhouettes of German and Japanese fighter aircraft fetch hundreds of dollars today—and in the Korean War. Troops often play cards to pass the time, and seeing the names, faces and titles of the wanted Iraqis during their games will help soldiers and Marines in case they run into the wanted individuals in the field, Brooks said.^[1]

The list of 'Most Wanted' was the result of a multi-intelligence agency collaboration which included the Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Command, and representatives from all US Service Branch Intelligence entities. The 'Most Wanted' names were then assigned to their respective cards by five US Army soldiers, 2LT Hans Mumm, SSG Shawn Mahoney, SGT Andrei Salter, SGT Scott Boehmler, and SPC Joseph Barrios, who were assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency.^[2] The pictures used on the cards came from a number of intelligence agencies, but most were derived from 'open sources'. The deck of cards was first announced publicly in Iraq on 11 April 2003, in a press conference by Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at U.S. Central Command. On that same evening Max Hodges, a Houston-based entrepreneur, found and downloaded a high-resolution artwork file for the deck from a Defense Department web server. Discovering the following day that the file had vanished from the military web server he became the first eBay seller to offer the artwork file, in PDF, which could be used to reproduce the deck.^[3] He quickly contracted Gemaco Playing Card Company to print 1,000 decks for about $4,000 and started selling both the decks, in advance of receiving them from the printer, on eBay, Amazon.com and his own web site. When some of his early auctions for a $4 deck of cards quickly rose to over $120,^[4] it did not take long for other eBayers to jump on the bandwagon and print or order decks of their own to sell. In just a few days hundreds of sellers materialized and the price dropped to just a few dollars per deck.

Texas-based Liberty Playing Card Co. received an order to manufacture the cards for the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and by claiming to be 'the authorized government contractor' quickly became another popular domestic supplier for the commercial market. 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.

List of cards[edit]

Bicycle Playing Cards

Other[edit]

There are also two jokers: one lists Arab tribal titles, the other Iraqi military ranks. There are no cards for most-wanted No. 45 (was #26), Nayif Shindakh Thamir, No. 53 (was #34 – Killed in 2003^[13] or probably still fugitive^[8]) Husayn al-Awadi, or No. 54 (was #35) Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, captured on 11 January 2004.^[8] Al-Muhammad was held for six years before being released on 30 July 2010. He has since fled to Syria where most of the other 6 uncaptured members of the deck of cards are reported to be hiding.^[14]

The 13 June 2003 edition of the BBC One satirical news quiz, Have I Got News for You, featured a set of the playing cards in one round, spoofing guest host Bruce Forsyth's 1980s game show Play Your Cards Right (the British version of the American series Card Sharks). The two teams played a version of the latter's main game, retitled Play Your Iraqi Cards Right (although during the segment it was revealed that the writers' first choice had been Play Your Kurds Right), with the same rules (and audience participation). Much of the humour of the round came from the reactions of the two team captains: while Paul Merton was clearly familiar with the game and greatly enjoyed it, his opponent, Ian Hislop, admitted he'd never seen Play Your Cards Right and appeared mystified by the game's rules and etiquette (when at one point Merton and the crowd shouted the traditional cry of 'lower, lower,' to predict the next card in the hidden sequence, Hislop commented, 'I'm not sure this programme could get much lower!')^{[citation needed]}

See also[edit]

• Mercenaries (video game) – used a similar playing card scheme for enemy leaders.

Sources[edit]

1. ^Burgess, Lisa (17 April 2003). 'Buyers beware: The real Iraq 'most wanted' cards are still awaiting distribution'. Stars and Stripes. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
2. ^'The Faces Behind the Faces on the 'Most Wanted' Deck'. Armed Forces Press Service.
3. ^Iraq Most Wanted Identification Playing Cards (PDF version) white rabbit online shop, archived on 27 November 2005 from the original
4. ^Valdes-Dapena, Peter (13 April 2003). 'Hot item: 'Most wanted Iraqi' cards'. CNN. Retrieved 13 May 2010.
5. ^Jane Sutton (17 August 2007). 'As last Iraqi POW released, Noriega only U.S. POW'. Reuters. Archived from the original on 26 February 2019. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
6. ^'Iraq Frees Saddam Hussein's Interior Minister'. Aina.org. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
7. ^Mamoun, Abdelhak. 'Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan, half brother of Saddam Hussein, has died - Iraqi News'. Iraq news, the latest Iraq news by Iraqi News. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
8. ^ ^{abcdefghijklmn}'أبرز وجوه النظام العراقي السابق: أين هم الآن؟' (in Arabic). BBC. 2 September 2010.
9. ^'Iraq: Peacekeeping Operations: 2 Mar 2009: Hansard Written Answers'. TheyWorkForYou.
10. ^'تلفزيون الناصرية: وفاة وزير الدفاع الاسبق سلطان هاشم في سجن الحوت'. 19 July 2020.
11. ^'Iraq executes Saddam Hussein's aide Abid Hamid Mahmud'. BBC News. 7 June 2012. Retrieved 7 June 2012.
12. ^DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISENPublished: 19 April 2003 (19 April 2003). 'A NATION AT WAR: THE HUNT; New Tape of Hussein Prolongs Debate on His Fate'. The New York Times. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
13. ^'A NATION AT WAR: THE IRAQI CAPITAL; HUSSEIN RALLIES IRAQI DEFENDERS TO HOLD CAPITAL - Page 2'. The New York Times. 25 March 2003. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
14. ^Mohammed, Riyadh, 'Hussein Backer Set Free in Iraq', Los Angeles Times, 5 August 2010, p. 10.

External links[edit]

• Media related to Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards at Wikimedia Commons
• Brigadier General Vincent Brooks introduces Iraqi cards at CentComm press conference in Doha, Qatar, 11 April 2003.
• 'Troops Dealt an Old Tool' by Tom Zucco, St. Petersburg Times, 12 April 2003.
• 'Card-Carrying Civilians', Time, 12 May 2003, page 25.
• Brigadier General Vincent Brooks introduced the first set of Iraqi freedom cards, 11 April 2003
• Card Makers Producing 'Most-Wanted' Decks: Company Warns Others About 'Joker' Image, 23 April 2003, ClickOnDetroit.com.

When were numbers and letters put on playing cards?

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Bill Calloway

Wilmington, Delaware

I contacted an old friend, Dr. Lafitte, an expert on the history of cards and gambling, and this is what he had to say: “To begin with, the ‘letters and numbers’ are called indexes, and in the brief history of indexes, there were two basic sizes. The first size was fairly small; all a person had to do was to barely fan the cards to see the indexes. Because one only needed to give the cards a slight squeeze to see the index, they were nicknamed ‘squeezers.’ They were a novelty at first, but their popularity increased by the early 1870s. One of the early popular squeezers was a deck called either the ‘Lone Star’ or ‘Texas Lone Star’ deck because of a large star on the back of the cards (circa 1870-75). How small was the index? Just look at the index of today’s playing card—look just at the number, not the suit symbol—now visualize a complete index slightly smaller than that.

“The second size is the one we are familiar with today. A number of playing card companies claim to have created it. I have a Grover Cleveland Presidential Deck (1888, if I’m not mistaken), and that has an index almost the size of a modern-day index. It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that today’s indexes became popular.”

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