"All On A Summer's Day"
That didn't take long. Only one day after two Aces, Uday and Qusay, were killed, the Queen of Hearts has been captured. Some desultory questions and comments:
- Four of a kind: all four Queens are now in custody.
- I wonder if the Queen turned himself in when he realized it would be safer than waiting for Task Force 20 to knock on his door. I don't imagine there's much time between the knock and the first bullet, and failure to respond promptly, which could easily happen if he were asleep or in the shower, could lead to a very unpleasant end.
- I also wonder if he felt his manliness threatened by having the most effeminate identification in the deck: 'Queen of Hearts'? His card seems to be one of those without an actual picture, so there's no way to judge the appropriateness of the identification. (Whoever decided to make serial rapist Uday Hussein the Ace of Hearts was either careless of secondary implications or had a sick sense of humor.)
- With the latest capture, 36 of the 52 cards have been accounted for, a total of 69.2%: three-fourths of the Aces (all except Saddam), half of the face cards (one king, four Queens, and a Jack), and three-fourths of the number cards. On the slightly-longer list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, the total comes to 37, or 67.2%.
- For a handy list of poker hands that can be built from these cards (not yet including the Queen of Hearts), see Priorities and Frivolities by 'Boomshock' (6:15 PM on 7/22 if the direct link doesn't work). I imagine he'll be updating it soon.
- Although the pace of captures (and now killings) has dramatically slowed, the rank of those captured has risen. (The graphs are here.) It has been 15 weeks today since the statue came down. In the first 7 1/2 of those weeks, up to the end of May, 27 were captured or turned themselves in, in the next 7 1/2 weeks, from June 1st through today, only 9 were captured or killed. But those 27 were mostly number cards, including lots of Twos, Threes, Fives, and Sixes, plus five face cards and no Aces, while the 9 have all been Sevens or above, and one-third have been Aces: in order, 7 10 10 A 7 9 A A Q. The loss in quantity is at least partly balanced by a gain in quality. As I have said before, we seem to be closing in on the big fish, while running out of little fish to capture, though there are still a few of them at large.
Posted by Dr. Weevil at July 23, 2003 12:27 PM