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They can be found all over the Internet in dizzying supply, from eBay to countless upstarts looking to make a few bucks off America's patriotic spirit.

The Pentagon's most-wanted Iraqis playing cards, emblazoned with photos of the 52 most-sought-after Iraqis and delivered this month to hundreds of troops and government officials, are now fetching $10 or more a pack.
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"It's been overwhelming," said Ed Jack, co-owner of Lionstone International, a Lake Forest, Ill., outfit that specializes in Internet wine and spirit sales but is now rolling in card cash.

"We originally thought our original run of 10,000 cards would be sold. Right now, we have orders coming in at 85 a minute. We have orders for 600,000 already, and that's in just eight days," gushed Jack, unable to contain his own shock and awe over the newfound windfall. "We've commissioned 1 million to be printed now."

He's selling the decks for $5.95 each.

On eBay, the oft-visited online-auction site, more than 2,000 sellers are offering copies of the Pentagon's deck, with some prices topping $100.

While the Pentagon didn't actually produce any of the cards for sale, its designs have been added to military Web sites, where would-be deck dealers can download the information to a printer -- professional or otherwise.

Pentagon officials aren't discouraging the booming card trade, even as many entrepreneurs claim their decks are original Pentagon issue, or in a few cases, CIA issue.

Even so, eBay announced this week that it has begun to look into whether some decks are being advertised truthfully on its site.

Defense Department brass, who report they printed only 200 decks, have no problems with their designs being used by would-be vendors. But the marketing rush has taken the Pentagon by surprise, even if Iraq's Republican Guard did not.

"It's taken on a life of its own," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens at the U.S. Central Command's Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, where American generals led the war on Iraq. "It was never meant as a sideshow to the war."

The playing cards -- Saddam Hussein is the ace of spades, his sons Odai and Qusai are the aces of hearts and clubs, respectively -- represent a new twist on an old military idea, said Navy Lt. Dan Hetlage, a Pentagon spokesman.

"It's an old tool in the toolbox," he said. During World War II, decks showed the silhouettes of Allied and Axis planes so U.S. troops wouldn't shoot down the wrong aircraft. The United States Playing Card Co., maker of Aviator, Bicycle and Hoyle playing cards, didn't make the newest cards -- the Pentagon did -- but has worked with the U.S. military before.

In World War II, the company printed special decks that were given to American prisoners of war. When dipped in water, the cards revealed prison escape routes.

During the war in Vietnam, the company printed decks containing nothing but the ace of spades -- "death" cards that were left as calling cards for the Viet Cong and regular North Vietnamese army.

This time around, the Pentagon had a list of 55 wanted Iraqis, but with only 52 cards to print pictures onto, three lower-ranking "Saddamites" didn't get cards of their own. Only one woman made the cut. And because the Pentagon couldn't find pictures for everyone, 13 cards show only silhouettes.

Saddam's minister of information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the now-missing Baath spinmeister who claimed Iraqi military triumphs even as American tanks rumbled around him, missed the cut entirely.

"My personal preference is he should've been a joker; he was funny," Hetlage said.

The deck's joker cards list Iraqi titles and military rankings.

Defense Department honchos credit the cards with helping in the capture of eight of Saddam's former claque.

Where the cyber market is flush with various versions of the deck, the brick and mortar halls of commerce are not.

"I've had no calls at all from customers wanting these," said Doug McLean, general manager of Sci-Fi City on East Colonial Drive in Orlando, where comics, games and cards find an eager audience. "I think this is a little fad. Very soon, people won't really care at all about these cards."

Copyright © April 23, 2003. Orlando Sentinel Tribune.