It's in the cards: The deck of 55 most-wanted Iraqis
From the Wolf Blitzer Reports staff in Washington:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Weeks before the first bombs fell on Baghdad a group of military intelligence analysts were wondering what the best way was to get information to battlefield troops on the Iraqi leaders most wanted by coalition forces.
They'd all been in the field and knew firsthand that bored soldiers often play card games.
And that was the beginning of the famous deck of cards that assigned all but three of the 55 members of Saddam Hussein's regime a card, with the Iraqi president himself designated the ace of spades.
Unveiled on April 11, 2003, the first card turned up the very next day when the seven of diamonds, Saddam's science adviser Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Sadi, surrendered to coalition forces.
The following day, the five of spades, Saddam's half-brother Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, was captured at the Syrian border.
Four days later another half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, the five of clubs, was captured in Baghdad.
And on it went. One by one, the top leaders of the former regime surrendered, were captured or killed.
Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister and the eight of spades, was taken into custody April 24. He once said death was preferable to capture.
"... To go to Guantanamo? I'd rather die," said Aziz.
Then on July 22: a landmark.
Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay -- the ace of hearts and ace of clubs -- are killed in a fierce gun battle in Mosul.
A month later, the man blamed for ordering a deadly chemical weapons attack against the Kurds in 1988, king of spades "Chemical Ali," is captured.
But the former leader continued to elude the coalition until December when he was found hiding in a house in Tikrit, his hometown.
The ace of spades was the ace in the hole.
