Content note: Portrait of a political leader framed as a death notice, with Arabic text. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Gulf War leaflet, portrait with mourning band 'The cold face of death and war'
A black-and-white line portrait of a man's head in three-quarter view, with a black mourning band across the upper-left corner, above one line of Arabic, 'The cold face of death and war.' The tell is the label doing the work: the death-notice band and the caption attach 'death' and 'war' to a face, and the leaflet gives no act or evidence for either.
- Date
- 1991
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- U.S. armed forces psychological operations (leaflet air-dropped over Iraq during the Gulf War)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Leaflet
- Issuer type
- Military
- Leader
- George H. W. Bush
- Audience
- Enemy forces
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Theme
- War and the military
- Event
- Gulf War
- Techniques
- Name-calling
- Source
- Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (image credited to a Japanese blog, blog.livedoor.jp/apgdj), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work, 17 U.S.C. 105; Commons PD-USGov-Military)
U.S. government work, public domain; the Commons file page carries PD-USGov-Military, author given as the U.S. armed forces psychological warfare department. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
الوجه البارد للموت والحرب
The cold face of death and war.
Read from a 330 px image; the Arabic line is clear. Machine-translated by Claude, not checked by a fluent reader.
