April 18, 2003
Playing cards?
I know I should have mentioned this sooner, but with so much stuff going on it slipped to the mess of my desk.
You probably knew about the "playing cards" given out by the thousands in Iraq. If not, the Pentagon (I presume) had playing cards (you know Ace, King, spades and diamonds cards) made up with the pictures of Iraq's regime the military wanted to round up. Supposedly for identification purposes, apparently there was also a "reward" attached commensurate with the value of the card the person's picture was on PNS article: War in the White House look at the 6th paragraph down.
One wonders whose bright idea this was. I personally found it rather trivializing to say the least. I was certainly offended that this approach was taken. I wonder how the people of Iraq feel about them.
When I first heard about the cards, I thought they were like sports trading cards - which was bad enough - but trading cards? I wonder what is on the backs? Are there reward instructions?
You can get a good view of the cards at WNBC Iraq playing cards. Or you can purchase them for a discounted price ($5.95) at Iraq 'most wanted' playing deck.
Tales of the weird.
Posted by rowan at April 18, 2003 7:23 PM | [eMail this article!] |"War games" at its lowest.....did someone actually think that the Iraqi citizens would know what a deck of cards (American) would look like and what we would use them for normally? I did not realize they were actually playing cards, I thought they were just cards with pictures on them. Someone has a lot of free time on their hands and my taxes are paying them....grrr.
It just blows my mind the things our government can/will do to feel superior over someone else....and it makes me feel sad and embarrassed at the same time.
Posted by: Christine at April 18, 2003 8:14 PMI think someone should design playing cards with photos of the looted treasures from Iraq's museums.
Posted by: cordle at April 19, 2003 5:40 AMI found a blurb from another site (http://rands.jerkcity.com/) that expresses my thoughts on the subject with absolute precision: "Our UI guy pointed out something interesting. You're a marine. While you'd like to be shooting your gun all the time, most of your job is pretty dull. ONLY ONE GUY GETS TO PUT THE FLAG ON SADDAMS BIG HEAD. When it's dull, what do you do... YOU PLAY CARDS. OH HEY I HAVE A DECK RIGHT HERE. If you want to catch these guys, you want to equip the folks who have the highest probability of finding them with as much data as possible. Endless games of gin with IRAQS FINEST staring at you has gotta bleed into your head. That's clever." (Source: http://rands.jerkcity.com/archives/000119.html)
Posted by: Andre Paul at April 24, 2003 12:10 PMWell I'm sure that the troops have the cards as well, but since the value of the card indicates the reward on the "official" I doubt they are primarily for the troops. They are for Iraqi's - who would get a reward.
I would also think that the one's most likely to spot these individuals are not our troops (who I would avoid if there was a bounty on my head).
Posted by: rowan at April 24, 2003 9:58 PM...and to bring it all back to your original comment that these cards are trivialising, now we get to listen to the "news" broadcasts reporting "we got the 8 of spades, who's not really as important as the queen of diamonds" blahblahblah... nothing like reducing it all to a poker hand... now that we're going to be broadcasting (translated) network news shows to the Iraqi people, how about some understanding of just how potentially offensive this "game" is...(of course, the shows themselves are bound to offend even more)
Posted by: barbara at April 25, 2003 2:06 PM