This Deck Is All Face Cards: Iraq’s Most-Wanted

The U.S. military is now in the playing card business. The game? Fifty-five-card pickup.

Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks announced at a briefing Friday that the armed forces will begin distributing a unique deck of cards to thousands of U.S. troops serving in Iraq. The cards feature pictures of “55 individuals who may be pursued, killed or captured,” Brooks said.

Posters and handbills of a “most-wanted” list of leaders of Saddam Hussein’s toppled regime also will be handed out to the troops.

In the card deck, Qusai Hussein is the ace of clubs. His brother, Uday, is the ace of hearts. The ace of spades is their father, Saddam.

Aside from the Hussein trio, there appears to be no pecking order for the pasteboards. The ace of diamonds, for instance, is Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti, Iraq’s presidential secretary. Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, perhaps the most recognizable Iraqi face other than Saddam, is the eight of spades.

The deck, sure to be an instant collector’s item, does not contain the visage of Mohammed Said Sahaf, the Iraqi information minister who boasted of battlefield successes even as American troops stormed the gates of Baghdad.

There is only one woman in the deck -- Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, described as a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) scientist.

The deck may contain portraits of Iraqi leaders who are already dead.

“The population will probably confirm that for us,” said Brooks. “The list does not exclude leaders who may already have been killed or captured.”

From a Times staff writer