Iraq 55 Most Wanted Cards

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, the U.S. military developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of President Saddam Husseins government, mostly high-ranking Baath Party members or members of the Revolutionary Command Council. The cards were officially named the "personality identification playing cards".
To date, 10 of the original 55 most wanted Iraqis are still at large and at least 7 of the 55 are dead.

Each card contains the wanted persons name, a picture if available, and 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 Hussein, the aces of clubs and hearts are his sons Qusay and Uday respectively, and the ace of diamonds is Saddams 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 some time later in 2003, the list itself was renumbered to conform (almost) to the deck of cards.
According to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jim Brooks, a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, such playing cards have been used as far back as the 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.
Developed 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, the deck of cards was first announced publicly in Iraq on April 11, 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. 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, 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.

Top Features Include

- Each card carefully digitally remastered for presentation on the iPhone and iPad, yet faithfully recreates the original government issued deck.
- Toggle off and on a setting showing which people have been captured or killed.
- Randomly scroll through by clicking random.
- Swipe your hand back and forth to realistically browse the cards.
- A fully universal application that can be used on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. No need to purchase a separate HD/XL application for your iPad.
- On the iPad the application will work in all orientations. You can hold it any way you like and it will keep up.
- Developed by an experienced programmer. No crashing, memory leak problems, or other annoying experiences.
- A dedicated developer who will add more features and keep improving the application. I love to get suggestions of features.
- A low price. Why pay more money for lesser apps?