Today I was supposed to leave for 3 weeks of R&R, however instead I’m still in Baghdad. One of my local Iraqi tech team was assassinated yesterday, and I can’t bring myself to leave yet.

A2, or ‘Hamoodi’ as we affectionately called him, was a high-profile insurgent target for reasons having nothing to do with our project. He was targeted specifically and assassinated along with his body guards while out in the red zone.

He was always a source of amusement for our team. He had a jovial personality, and consistently made us all laugh. He struggled early on with the tech training, but was coming into his own as a server/network administrator.

He is survived by his wife, and six month old son. He was 23 years old.