Article about War Profiteers Cards: "Hot `Most Wanted' cards prompt foes, backers of U.S. policy to follow suit"

by Jack Fischer, Mercury News
July 27th, 2003

The thing about a really great idea is that everyone wants in.

That's what the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has discovered since April, when it issued playing cards to U.S. soldiers with a photograph of a "most wanted'' Iraqi on the face of each card.

At first, it wasn't bad. The decks became hot collectibles on eBay, a commercial card printing company issued copies, and the media leapt whenever one of the featured faces was apprehended -- even if it was only the regional Baath Party official who had been designated as the three of hearts. Plus: The sheer number of bad guys tended to minimize the fact that the ace in the hole, as it were -- Saddam Hussein -- had not been dealt out of the game.

But now, as so often happens, things seem to have gotten away from the fad-makers.

So far, in addition to the original deck, at least a half-dozen decks pertaining to the Iraq war -- three pro-war, three anti -- have been issued around the country, and the phenomenon seems to be moving beyond the war to other topics.

Among the most successful of the grass-roots, anti-war decks is one issued by Kathy Eder, a Catholic school teacher in San Jose whose "Operation Hidden Agenda'' deck has been featured in print, radio and television news accounts internationally. To date, she has sold about 10,000 decks at $9.95 each. (Eder donates half the proceeds to U.S. Veterans Dealing with Gulf War Syndrome and to international peace efforts. She nets a dollar a pack.)

A 42-year-old Los Gatos resident and teacher of social justice and morality at Bellarmine College Preparatory, Eder said the idea for the cards came to her when a friend showed her a Wall Street Journal story about all the countries that supplied Saddam with materials that could be used for making weapons of mass destruction. That, along with the fact that her tax dollars were being used to finance a war she opposed, left Eder feeling that "we're all guilty'' and that she needed to do something to express her dismay.

She said she is acting out of her Roman Catholic faith, noting that the pope and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed the war, and that the church's ``just war'' theory generally condones war only when there is no alternative.

"I do think Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein, but I created this deck to help people ask questions,'' she said. ``And one of the questions is, did we do the right thing for the wrong reasons? The right thing would be ridding people of Hussein, and the wrong reasons would be the hidden agenda of people doing it for greed, oil and power.''

Once she struck on the idea, Eder said, she spent five or six weeks of nights and weekends researching excerpts from the media that raised ethical questions about the conduct and motives for the war. The sources ranged from the New York Times to Bruce Springsteen's Web site, and quotes ranged from Mohandas Gandhi to Donald Rumsfeld. The back of each card features a picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in the 1980s.

The reception to Eder's labor of conscience speaks volumes about the current political climate in the country and the depths of aversion to political dissent.

Eder was ignored or turned down by 30 companies and organizations that she approached to help publish the project. At one point, she said, a card printing company in Missouri, to which she had sent a $3,500 deposit, pulled out when it saw the subject matter. Finally, a business in Texas, Liberty Playing Cards, agreed to take the job.

Meanwhile, Eder's employer, Bellarmine Prep, has received sufficient complaints about her effort -- which has nothing to do with the school -- that Principal Mark L. Pierotti felt compelled to post a letter on the school Web site essentially supporting Eder's right to make the cards but condemning any disrespect to the country's leaders. Pierotti also said the school and Eder are in agreement that use of the cards would not be an appropriate "tactic'' within the classroom.

In any case, now that it's off the ground, Eder seems to be finding a receptive audience for her project. She has sold out a first printing of 3,000 decks and a second of 5,000, already has 2,000 orders for a third printing of 10,000 and has ordered yet another 10,000 after that. Most of the sales have been through the Anno Domini Web site, http:// galleryad.com/store/oha/.

One of the few retailers she found willing to sell the decks -- Bookshop Santa Cruz -- asked her for an additional 1,000 decks on the day they went on sale, in late June. People were lining up for them, Eder recalls. "At first,'' she said, "they thought it was for Harry Potter.''

Still, in Santa Clara County she was turned down by virtually every retailer, large and small, that she approached. The only place selling them in San Jose is an art gallery her brother runs, Anno Domini at 150 S. Montgomery St., Unit B.

But "now I have a person who wants to be sole distributor in Japan, someone who wants Europe and someone who wants the rest of the world,'' Eder added. "I'm doing just what I didn't want George Bush to do -- carve up the world.''

Of course, sale of Eder's decks and the other offshoots are all a pittance compared with the original Iraqi "most wanted'' deck, which the Department of Defense Web site says has sold more than 1.5 million copies.

The main distributor of the commercial version of the government deck is a company in Lake Forest, Ill., that runs a Web site called GreatUSAflags.com and also sells a companion deck of heroes of the war, called the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Military Heroes'' deck.

The second freelance deck in support of the war is being sold by a conservative online news site, NewsMax.com. Called "The Deck of Weasels,'' it features a cross section of "villains'' from U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix and Mexican President Vicente Fox to morning talk-show host Katie Couric and such movie stars as Susan Sarandon, all thoughtfully bedecked in Iraqi military berets.

The third is an effort called "The Ambushers,'' which features caricatures of a range of war opponents, mostly international leaders, domestic politicians and a generous array of American entertainers.

On Eder's side of the aisle, there's the "Deck of Republican Chicken Hawks,'' created by a Hollywood film director named Jerry Vasilatos and his wife. This one features pro-war Republicans who have ducked service in the military. Among the faces are Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove, humorist P.J. O'Rourke and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Finally, there's the "Deck of War Profiteers,'' published by a group of activists in connection with the Oakland-based, non-profit Ruckus Society, which trains political activists. This deck features former secretary of state George Shultz, a senior counselor for Bechtel Corp., which has received contracts to help rebuild Iraq; the head of the American Petroleum Institute; and the head of United Technologies, for making weapons. The makers of these cards say the war on terror "is about subjugation, resource extraction and opening markets: a practice once referred to more honestly as colonialism.''

Of course, Americans like nothing so much as too much of a good thing, as Beanie Babies and reality TV amply testify. And so the deck-of-cards phenomenon is spreading well beyond the war in Iraq.

Adam Kamal, general partner of Liberty Playing Cards, said he has received queries from someone wanting to put his extended family on cards for a reunion, and a law firm that wanted to put all 52 partners on a deck. And he has heard from former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach about a deck for his real estate company.

So in the end, it may be that Kamal's and the other card companies are the biggest winners.

"Industrywide there's a 10-fold increase in playing-card sales in general,'' said Kamal. "It's fizzling a bit, but I think the interest will keep going at least until Christmas. From what I've seen, there has never been such a time.''