Talk:Baghdad Airport Road

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[edit] 8km long, or 12km long?

I have read elsewhere that the expressway is 12 km long. The article currently says that it is 5 miles, 8 km long, and, in a subsequent paragrapn, that it is 12 km long. Well, it is either one or the other. -- Geo Swan 15:07, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naomi Klien assertion

I excised the Naomi Klien "correction". Is there room for the assertion? Possibly. But it shouldn't be asserted as a fact. Either Klien misunderstood what she was told, or the translator mistranslated, or Sgrena herself misspoke or was misinformed. There is no route separate from Route Irish reserved for diplomats. Occasionally, as needed, the US military would shut down the on-ramps to Route Irish, effectively reserving it for the sole use of denizens of the Green Zone.

So, while it can be verified that Klien made her assertion, it can not be presented as a correction. -- Geo Swan 00:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] One thing about Irish...

...it was always a hell of a ride! NetSerfer 14:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I corrected information regarding the MSR designations, both what route is actually 'Irish' and why it's named that. I removed the following (which is incorrect): Nickname In 2005, the Irish Brigade was given the job of safeguarding the route. The Irish Brigade is the modern United States National Guard unit descended from the 69th New York State Volunteers, formed at the beginning of the American Civil War. The Civil War unit was composed predominantly of Irish immigrants. Nothing against the NYNG, but the MSRs were named after sports teams. NetSerfer 13:20, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, it's nice that you added that information, but the other story is frequently cited. From what I can tell the timeline does not support the naming deriving from the unit, so I've explained that accordingly. It's better to handle misinformation this way rather than just deleting it. --Dhartung | Talk 08:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Roger that. I'll clean up the text a bit. NetSerfer 02:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Good cleanup, Netserfer. Thanks for your time on this Route Irish and on the real one. --Habap 18:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV issues

First, I added a "main article" link so that people know there's a full article on the topic where most of the discussion belongs. Second, I added the SectPOV tag after starting to make a few fixes, because there are some odd claims in the text -- like that "Ambassador Negroponte" ordered the soldiers around, which doesn't make sense since he does not have a role in the military command structure. There are a few claims in the Italian report that were vigorously disputed by the Americans, and that should be noted in this article. The incident should be in the article, but it should be summarized better. I'm not sure that a detailed discussion of closure procedures is really relevant to the *Route Irish* article, given that they may have changed since then and different units (mainly Iraqi) now perform those duties. --Dhartung | Talk 09:20, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

  1. Adding a main article link is good.
  2. I think your {SectPOV} tag is misplaced:
    1. The article is completely correct to refer to him as "Ambassador Negroponte", because, prior to being appointed National Director of Intelligence John Negroponte was the Ambassador to Iraq. More particularly, he was the ambassador, not NDI, at the time of the Italian's shooting.
    2. American policy, at the time, was to allow locals, and risk-taking foreigners, to use Route Irish most of the time. The highway was closed approximately once a day, to allow ordinary travelers to ride in armored buses to the airport. The highway was also closed whenever a VIP -- like, for example, Ambassador Negroponte, wanted to travel to the airport. Negroponte didn't have to "order the soldiers around". Closing the highway for his convenience was policy.
    3. I based this section not on the Italian report -- I based it on the official US report. So, whether the Italian report contains claims disputed by the Americans is neither here nor there.
    4. Please explain why the closure procedure, which as you predicted. has been abandoned, is not relevant to this article. This road was routinely called "The most dangerous road in the world". You seem to be suggesting that the danger of using this road, and the procedure the US used to transport individuals, should be stripped from the article merely because a new, different procedure is in place?
Cheers! -- Geo Swan 07:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
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