John F. Burns skriver om the Irish route, kodeordet for veien til Bagdad International. Hillary Clinton var på besøk i februar, og ble fløyet inn. Hun husket at da hun var der i desember 2003 ble hun kjørt. Det sier noe om sikkerhetssituasjonen.

So feared has the route become that an American security company announced earlier this year that it would run an armored-car taxi service to the airport from the Sheraton hotel on the Tigris’s east bank. The cost, one way, per person: $2,390, probably the world’s most expensive airport cab ride.

In the past year, American and British diplomats and visiting V.I.P.’s have been barred from using the road, and are flown to and from the airport on helicopter gunships, a 10-minute roof-skimming journey to the Green Zone. On a visit in February, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that she had driven along the road on a previous journey, in December 2003, and cited the change as a measure of how much security in Iraq had deteriorated.

The report said there had been 135 attacks on the road in the four months up to early March, including 15 suicide car bombs, 19 roadside bombs, and 14 attacks with rocket-propelled grenades. But even these figures may understate the threat. One report this year by a Western security company said airport road attacks had included 14 suicide car bombs in November and December last year alone, double the incidence cited by the Calipari report.

On Way to Baghdad Airport, One Eye on the Road and One on the Insurgents