Content note: Caricature of a political leader drawn as a skull-faced figure, with Arabic text. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Gulf War leaflet, skull-faced figure 'Ruler of the dead'
A black-and-white line drawing of a bearded, moustached man in a beret with a skull badge, his face drawn as a skull with hollow eye sockets and bared teeth, above a single line of Arabic, 'Ruler of the dead!' The tell is the label doing the work: the figure is reduced to a death's-head and one title, with no claim about any act that could be checked.
- 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 (scan credited to psywarrior.com), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work, 17 U.S.C. 105; Commons PD-USGov)
U.S. government work, public domain; the Commons file page carries PD-USGov with author 'Federal Government' and source psywarrior.com. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
حاكم القتلى!
Ruler of the dead! (also readable as 'Governor of the slain').
Read from a 210 by 400 px scan; the Arabic line is clear. Machine-translated by Claude, not checked by a fluent reader.
