Baghdad Airport Rd: "a symbol of Washington's troubles in Iraq"

[leftchick]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/10348284.htm?1c

Baghdad's airport road a death trap

The road to Baghdad's international airport is emerging as a symbol of Washington's troubles in Iraq, as snipers and car bombers infest the four-lane highway.

BY OMAR JASSIM

Knight Ridder News Service


BAGHDAD - It's perhaps the most dangerous stretch of road in Iraq.

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Barely 7 miles long, the four-lane highway is emerging as a symbol of Washington's troubles in Iraq. Despite the presence of more than 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the road is such a death trap that the American and British embassies last week declared it off limits for civilian personnel.

Diplomats now must use helicopters to get to the airport from the fortified ''green zone'' of ministries and embassies downtown. Anyone else who's leaving Baghdad by airplane still has to brave the road.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. After Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in April 2003, the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority foresaw the reopening of the airport road that June. Eighteen months later, a senior American official in Washington noted, ``We still can't control it.''

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U.S. officials aren't alone in their frustration. Iraqis who once used the roadway regularly also are disturbed.

''I cannot take the airport road because it is too dangerous,'' said Aubaida Adnan, a taxi driver. ``I was on that road once when an American tank was destroyed. The soldiers started to shoot randomly. A bullet hit my car. I tried to escape, but I crashed.''