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The King of Clubs Is Dead
Travel back in time to the hazy opening days of the Iraqi invasion. Hans Blix. Shock and Awe. The falling Saddam statue. You also might remember Coalition forces distributing an infamous deck of playing cards showing the 52 most wanted officials of the rogue regime. (I assume Michael Moore and Sean Penn were the jokers.)
Most of the figures were captured while others were shuffled out of the deck through more violent means. But the King of Clubs remained at large. “The King of Clubs? Who izzat?” Correct! It was Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, loyal Saddam stooge, Tikrit native and, following Saddam’s death, the leader of the banned Ba’ath party.
More recently, the Ginger Jihadi led the Naqshbandi Order, which helped facilitate the rise of ISIS. (Based on al-Duri’s hair color alone, he should have been the king of hearts or diamonds, but Rumsfeld was never much of a poker guy.)
Sadly for the al-Duri family and the Greater Tikrit Convention and Visitor Bureau, Uncle Izzat was killed in a small firefight north of Baghdad:
His dead body was pictured on social media today with his teeth missing, an unkempt orange beard and a bloody head wound.
Salahuddin governor Raed al-Jabouri said soldiers and allied Shia militiamen killed him in an operation east of Tikrit — a city that was recaptured by the government two weeks ago.
He said: ‘This is a major victory for those involved in the operation. He is considered a mastermind for this terrorist group. For sure this will have an impact on them… there will be a break among them.”
Rest in pieces, Izzat. In his honor, I ask all Ricochetti to fly their jaunty berets at half staff and offer a toast to the soldiers who took out the King of Clubs once and for all.
Published in General
Blix? That’s Brix.
Forget Blix. I wanna know where Saddam found this Irishman to lead his armies? That guy looks like he should be putting pints away in Dublin, not drinking coffee in Baghdad.
And I don’t know if they’re legit, but an Iraqi website has pics of what they claim are Clubby’s body, and those of his bodyguards. Gotta say, it sure looks like him (how many other readheaded Iraqi generals are there?) but it is the Internet, and we know how these things go sometimes.
I don’t want to brag, but … I still have a complete set of playing cards.
I look at that picture of AL-Duri and I keep seeing Walter White.
And then Britt McHenry was all like “maybe if I had missing teeth I could be a dead terrorist too”.
You beat me to it. I was going to say: Put a Homburg and dark glasses on him and you’ve got Heisenberg.
It always unnerves me to see that mine is the last comment on a post. Did I really say everything there was to say? Especially when it was really just an aside? Hello? (Crickets.)
Yet more proof that the invasion of Iraq just created more terrorists. If not for our ill-advised military action, Izzat today would no doubt be a productive member of Iraqi society and perhaps even Chairman of the Greater Tikrit Convention and Visitors Bureau.
(Dave, I hope this comment makes you fully-nerved once again.)