Whatever happened to Baghdad’s infamous airport road? “Route Irish,” so named for the Fighting 69th, which patrolled it until recently, is still the only way to reach the capital by air. But it has dropped from the headlines — because it is now relatively safe.
A year ago, the Baghdad airport road became the greatest symbol of supposed American failure in Iraq because of a rash of bombing and shootouts, including incidents that caused 37 deaths in April and the tragic mistaken killing of Italian agent Nicola Calipari. But last month, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told the Associated Press that only one injury occurred on the road in October; there were no killings. He called the airport road “one of the most safe and secure routes in all of Iraq.”
People who missed the one Associated Press story on the subject are not likely to read about it elsewhere. Our search for press mentions of “Route Irish” in the last six months turned up just two references in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle.
In late 2004 and the first half of 2005, these newspapers lavished coverage on the Baghdad airport road. They made eight mentions of it from November 2004 to June 2005, according to our Lexis-Nexis search.
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