PARIS - The ace of spades? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gets the honor in a new French deck of cards. President Bush is the king of diamonds and Osama bin Laden the joker. The game takes a jab at the famous deck of cards created for U.S. soldiers hunting down ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and other leaders from the deposed regime.
President of the United States George W. Bush as King of Diamonds is part of a card deck depicting 'the 52 most dangerous American officials', sold by the French group Reseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network) is seen in this hand out photo. Caption under photograph reads : 'Head of a baseball club and director of Salem bin Laden's oil company (brother of Osama). Designated President of the United States by friends of his father at the Supreme Court before the vote count showed that he lost the elections'. A little over 2, 500 decks have been sold on the internet in recent weeks. (AP Photo/Reseau Voltaire)
"I found it completely indecent to present a manhunt as a game," said Thierry Meyssan, the man behind the French deck. "We thought this card game would allow us to ... explain why we consider the government of George Bush a threat to international security."
Meyssan is the author of a one-time French best seller, "9-11: The Big Lie," claiming that no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, and that the attacks were plotted by a faction within the U.S. military.
Now, Meyssan said in a telephone interview, he wants to expose "the 52 most dangerous American officials."
Meyssan heads the Voltaire Network, a left-wing association that put the cards on its Internet site.
A little over 2,500 decks a la francaise have been sold, at $9.20 each, on the Internet in recent weeks, Meyssan said. There are plans to sell the decks in stores soon and translate them into 10 languages, he said.
Each card carries a photo of the official and a text explaining the choice. Bush, as the king of diamonds, is described as "the president of a baseball club."
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