TRADING CARDS….OK, so we’ve got these playing cards with pictures of Iraq’s most wanted baddies. That’s fine, kind of a cute idea, but why 55 cards? You’ve got your normal 52 cards, and as the picture below shows, they’re also using the two jokers, but what’s the 55th one? Is it that weird card that always has the rank of poker hands? Or the copyright card? Or what?
UPDATE: Ah, here we go: there are three jokers in the deck.
UPDATE 2: The 7 of diamonds has turned himself in. But this story deepens the mystery further: it says, “Each deck has two Jokers, one showing Iraqi military ranks and the other, Arab tribal titles.” That’s 54 cards.
This story lists every one of the cards, but there are only 54, and once again the two jokers are said to have military ranks and tribal titles. So that means there are only 52 actual faces.
What’s the deal here? Is the Pentagon being coy about this for some reason, or is the press so incompetent that they can’t even get a simple story like this right?
UPDATE 3: OK, I’ll be damned. Here’s the official DoD list of 55 baddies, and here’s the official DoD picture of all the playing cards. Unless I’m blind, there are 52 people on the cards plus two jokers with titles and ranks and one blank card. So out of the 55 official baddies, who are the three who didn’t get put on a card? And why?
