Iraq War: 'Most wanted' playing cards

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It has been 20 years since the start of the Iraq War. In April 2003, the US military unveiled a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's government. The cards were first revealed to the world by Brigadier General Vincent K Brooks at a press conference on 11 April 2003. He has been sharing his memories of that time with Matt Pintus. (Picture: Vincent K Brooks holds up the 'most wanted' playing cards. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, Namu Lanter combo here with some exciting news. My award-winning podcast, DearDota, is back for a second season.
0:09.0	We're bringing you more moving personal stories and more letters of advice from people all around the world.
0:15.0	For daughters, everywhere.
0:17.0	That's DearDota from the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:31.0	Hello, thanks for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Matt Pintas.
0:38.0	I'm bringing you a series of programmes to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.
0:44.0	Today, the deck of cards that help the United States play the winning hand.
0:49.0	It's the 11th of April 2003, day 22 of the Iraq War.
1:01.0	The central command today issued a hit list of the most wanted men in Iraq.
1:06.0	The list comes in the form of a deck of 55 cards.
1:10.0	The key list has 55 individuals who may be pursued, killed or captured.
1:16.0	And the list does not exclude leaders who may have already been killed or captured.
1:21.0	That's General Brigadier Vincent Brooks. He was speaking to the world's media from the US Army's base in Qatar.
1:29.0	The forces were already in Baghdad. They'd been there for about four or five days at this point in time.
1:34.0	The regime had essentially collapsed the day before on the 10th of April.
1:39.0	And the information effort we wanted to emphasize is that we are now pursuing the leaders of the regime to complete its destruction.
1:48.0	I was told to find some way to present that. My insistence was that it needs to be something that's actually deployed already.
1:55.0	And I was told about cards that had been to produce and pushed forward to Army Marine Corps units.
2:01.0	And so I chose those and then sought somewhere in the headquarters where they might be located.
2:06.0	And there was one set of cards. So I moved the two jokers to the back and Saddam Hussein to the back.
2:13.0	As it was my custom at the time to not even acknowledge Saddam Hussein and any of the presentations that I made.
2:19.0	The point was that the regime was over and we weren't going to even acknowledge his authority in the regime or give him any day-to-day credence.
	...

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