[NCDXA] Iraq Photo

[Fred Matos]

Hello NCDXA,
I believe that I have repeated my Iraq story a few times.   That happens with old age.  But this time with a photo.
I am attaching a photo of myself and Diya Al Asadi, YI1DZ, (now Z81D) having tea at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad.  I was the national telecom regulator, so I went to the Canal Hotel to talk to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) communications director (Robert Kasca, S53R and YI9R, now T6AA) to see what was going on; and to meet with Diya who worked for the WFP.  Diya was also the director of the Iraqi Amateur Radio Society.   

Diya and I planned on an amateur radio conference where all amateurs would be invited.  It would be both business and social, with the business part including developing recommendations for modern regulations, licensing, etc.
But the Canal Hotel was truck bombed a few days after my visit, so we called off the conference.  Furthermore, the WFP/Baghdad Director was killed in the blast, and the WFP withdrew its food assistance program from Iraq.  Several of the communications staff were injured, requiring medical evacuation to hospitals in Germany.  
One wonders about the motivation for the blast that impacted a major humanitarian effort of providing food to the needy.  There were numerous countries and U.N. agencies involved in the nation building efforts.  The terrorists wanted the nation building efforts to fail so they could eventually point out the overall failed effort so they could take over the country.
In a somewhat related incident, a few weeks later I had business at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad where I was intervening for some Iraqi spectrum managers to obtain visas so they could travel to Jordan where they could obtain visas at the U.S. embassy so they could travel to the U.S. for some training courses. (There was no U.S. Embassy in Iraq at the time.)
The Embassy meeting went well, but I tell this story because the Jordanian Embassy was truck bombed about a week later.  
I was sharing living quarters with an FBI man who was investigating the bombings.  He jokingly said "Maybe we should follow you around.  Wherever you go gets bombed."
And another related story.  I gave a seminar in Tel Aviv a few years before my Iraq days.  There was a great restaurant there with great Italian food, with great ambiance, outside dining in palm trees, etc.  I asked for a copy of the menu so I could attend when I returned.   I returned home, and I was watching the evening news a week later.  There was a news story that immediately caught my attention.  It was "Busy Tel Aviv restaurant is bombed by a bomb left in a bag on the patio.   Six people killed."  Yes, it was the very same place.  
73
FredW3ICM 

-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip Barsky via NCDXA <ncdxa at ncdxa.org>
To: NCDXA <ncdxa at ncdxa.org>; PVRC Digest Submissions <pvrc at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tue, Apr 27, 2021 4:53 pm
Subject: [NCDXA] NCDXA Weekly roundtable will be tomorrow Wednesday April 28, 2021 at 0730 PM EDT

Phil Barsky,  K3EW, NCDXA Treasureris inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Sunspots or no sunspots always an informative and lively discussion about past week'd propagation and upcoming forecasts. 
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