Quoted from bumblethru

And as a side note, how the heck did this subject get on the Iraq thread?

Quoted Text

Iraqi hairdressers, facing threats from extremists, work in secret
BY DIAA HADID The Associated Press

    BAGHDAD, Iraq — Umm Doha cuts hair and waxes eyebrows in secret from her living room because making women look pretty can get a person killed in her Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighborhood.
    Hardline Muslim extremists who believe it is sinful for women to appear beautiful in public have forced many beauticians to move their trade underground.
    Sunni and Shiite militants began blowing up salons roughly two years ago. They killed several stylists and bullied others into putting down their scissors and makeup brushes for good, all in an effort to stamp out what they view as the corrupting spread of Western culture.
    Besides beauty salons, militants have also targeted liquor stores, barber shops and Christian churches.
    In the past year, most beauty salons in the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra went underground, as they did in the Sunnicontrolled neighborhood of Dora in west Baghdad.
    To those outside of Iraq, the prospect of being killed just for frequenting a hair salon might seem a convincing reason not to go. But despite being targeted by militants, stylists say women here still want to look good — and stylish. Refusing to get a haircut or having their makeup done would be giving in to the violence and despair surrounding them.
    “See this salon?” said the stylist Kifah, as she deftly lopped off a woman’s dark hair into smart layers in her east Baghdad establishment. “It’s never been empty, not through the Iraq-Iran war, the Gulf war or this war. Women are women, they always want to look good.”
    Despite her bravado, Kifah, like all the hairdressers interviewed, asked that her full name not be used because she feared retaliation by extremists.
    The latest attack on a salon was Dec. 13, in the city of Mosul northwest of the capital. Gunmen stormed the home of a woman who was running a beauty parlor out of one room. They killed her.
    Last year, extremists blew up 42-year-old Umm Doha’s beauty parlor in west Baghdad after she did not heed their warnings to close shop.
    “They didn’t want a ladies salon there,” she said. Two other salons were also blown up.
    Umm Doha said hardline Muslims were offended by the sight of freshly made-up women leaving her salon, including brides heading to their weddings — even though they were conservatively veiled while outside.
    Days after her small shop was destroyed, she converted a room in her home into an underground salon. She said she had no choice: Her husband’s low-paying clerk’s job does not pay enough to keep food on the table for their three children.
    It isn’t known how many secret salons exist in Iraq, but many women bullied out of their shops work on customers at home. Such an arrangement cuts into profits because the beauticians will deal only with women they already know.
    Umm Doha said she has recently been earning only about $200 a month. The brides are the real salon money-spinners: They must be fully waxed, eyebrows shaped, have a fancy hairstyle and a makeover — all for about $65. Umm Doha now sees just two or three brides a month instead of every week.
    While danger is rife for beauticians, those plying their trade in areas that have been secured by Iraqi and U.S. troops, or controlled by Sunni tribal groups opposed to al-Qaida in Iraq, seem to have more latitude to work.
    A few roads down from Umm Nour’s place, the hairdresser Shams runs a salon in an area protected by a checkpoint separating her part of the neighborhood from the extremists who have forced her colleague into hiding. “I’ve been here for four years and I’ve never been threatened,” Shams said.
    Across town in a Shiite neighborhood in east Baghdad, Kifah’s salon sits wedged between a mechanic’s shop and a shuttered store.
    Inside, a cluster of women wait, wet hair wrapped in towels. One woman leans back on a chair as a beautician applies a white paste to her face. Another sits with a plastic cap on her hair, strands pulled out to be lightened. A table next to the window holds the ubiquitous pot of sweet Iraqi tea.
    Many of the customers in Kifah’s shop said they were warweary refugees from Sunni western Baghdad, from Shiite families, or Shiites married into Sunni families who fled into more secure eastern Baghdad.
    One of those women lay back in Kifah’s chair. She asked not to be named, fearing identification by the extremists her family had fl ed.
    But the woman said the strife made her want to look her best. She said she could not stop the war, but she could boost her morale by looking good.
    Iraq’s violence, she said, was like a person suffering from a high fever. “The fever will break and Iraq will return to normal. But until then, we want to be stylish and look good,” she said.
    “Here, we give women hope,” Kifah said. “They feel like women, even during the worst tragedy.”
    Kifah’s own niece and nephew have disappeared. Another niece was kidnapped and later found dead, even after Kifah’s family paid a ransom, she said.
    Still, her salon must stay open.
    “If we give some hope here, it helps us carry on,” she said, dusting off the salon chair to prepare for her next customer.

A hairdresser trims a young woman's locks in a salon where ladies gather to primp and catch up on gossip in a Shiite-dominated neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The neighborhood is considered relatively safe, unlike many areas in mostly Sunni west Baghdad where extremists rule.

Quoted Text

U.S. deaths increase after 4-month drop
January's higher toll partly attributed to mission beyond Baghdad  
  
By NANCY A. YOUSSEF, McClatchy
First published: Friday, February 1, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. death toll in Iraq increased in January, ending a four-month drop in casualties, and most of the deaths occurred outside Baghdad or the once-restive Anbar province, according to military statistics.

In all, 38 American service members had been reported killed in January by Thursday evening, compared with 23 in December. Of those, 33 died from hostile action, only nine of them in Baghdad or Anbar.

Since the beginning of the war in 2003, at least 3,942 members of the U.S. military have died.

U.S. officials in Iraq said the death toll had risen because the military was targeting armed groups that had been driven out of Baghdad and Anbar by the increase in American troops.

In January, the military launched a major offensive in northeastern Diyala province, where nine service members were killed. In addition, the U.S. moved troops to the northwestern Ninevah province, which has become an al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold. Seven service members were killed there in January, compared with four in December.

The fact that more Americans have been killed in those provinces has some fretting that the U.S. is fighting another round of "whack-a-mole," a term that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., once used to describe chasing insurgents and terrorists from one part of Iraq to another.

Others argue that the drop in American deaths in Baghdad and Anbar is evidence that al-Qaida in Iraq has been weakened, and that operations such as those in Diyala and Ninevah will weaken it further.

"Al-Qaida knows the surge is working," President Bush said Thursday in a speech in Las Vegas. "They no longer have a safe haven in Anbar province; they're on the run."

However, Pentagon officials have said that although al-Qaida in Iraq is weaker, they still don't know when they'll be able to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq below the pre-surge level of about 140,000.

American commanders in Iraq are even more circumspect. Nearly all agree that al-Qaida in Iraq is weaker since the U.S. troop buildup began, but they caution that violence probably would return to places such as Baghdad and Anbar if American troops left.

U.S. in security talks The United States, determined to prevent a resurgence of terror networks in Iraq, wants to preserve the right to hunt down top foreign fighters, as it negotiates a long-term security agreement with the Iraqis, according to a working draft described to The Associated Press.

The agreement will not tie the U.S. to specific troop levels, but foresees a flexible agreement that would allow the U.S. and Iraqi governments to adapt and shift responsibilities as conditions change.

Other portions of the agreement would provide standard legal protections for U.S. troops, who are governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and thus would not be subject to Iraqi law.

Called a Status of Forces Agreement, the document would lay out the legal parameters under which U.S. forces would operate.

Quoted Text

Suicide: The wars' other toll
121 soldiers killed themselves last year and 2,100 others tried  
  
By DANA PRIEST, Washington Post
First published: Friday, February 1, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who was waiting for the Army to decide whether to court-martial her for endangering another soldier and turning a gun on herself last year in Iraq, attempted to kill herself Monday evening. In so doing, the 25-year-old Army reservist joined a record number of soldiers who have committed or tried to commit suicide after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"I'm very disappointed with the Army," Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. "Hopefully this will help other soldiers." She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned Wednesday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

Whiteside's personal tragedy is part of an alarming phenomenon in the Army's ranks: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments.

Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, the Army's top psychiatrist and author of the study, said that suicides and attempted suicides "are continuing to rise despite a lot of things we're doing now and have been doing." Ritchie added: "We need to improve training and education. We need to improve our capacity to provide behavioral health care."

Ritchie's team found that the common factors in suicides and attempted suicides include failed personal relationships; legal, financial or occupational problems; and the frequency and length of overseas deployments. She said the Army must do a better job of making sure that soldiers in distress receive mental health services.

The study acknowledges that the Army still does not know how to adequately assess, monitor and treat soldiers with psychological problems.

Over the past year, the Army has reinvigorated its efforts to understand mental health issues and has instituted new assessment surveys and new online videos and questionnaires to help soldiers recognize problems and become more resilient, Ritchie said. It has also hired more mental health providers.

Quoted Text

Anti-war vigil held in Gillibrand’s office
Protesters come together with goal of ending U.S. presence in Iraq
Saturday, January 5, 2008
By Lee Coleman (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A group of peace activists called for the immediate end to the Iraq war on Friday while keeping warm inside the local office of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand.

The seven-hour vigil in the congresswoman’s district office at 487 Broadway went smoothly with no need for police intervention.

“We have a great relationship with these groups,” said Patricia Friesen, one of the congresswoman’s district representatives.

“They are always welcome,” Friesen said.

In fact, the district office, which usually closes at 5 p.m., was kept open until 10 p.m. to accommodate representatives of seven different anti-war organizations.

Gillibrand, D-Hudson, was not present but members of her staff discussed the war with the about two dozen people who participated in the vigil.

Gillibrand was returning from London, where she and her husband, who is from England, were visiting family, according to her staff.

“Our goal is not to put the pressure on Ms. Gillibrand or to confront her on why she voted in favor of the bill to fund the war and occupation in Iraq,” says a statement from a group called Peace Works, which coordinated the vigil.

“Instead, we want more of the American public to know that this was and is wrong, immoral and illegal and must end now without any strings attached,” the statement says.

The groups, which include the Saratoga Peace Alliance, Veterans for Peace and the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace, want an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, no American bases there and no more spending American tax dollars on the occupation of that country.

“Our purpose is to unite America,” said Jim Fulmer of Saratoga Springs.

Fulmer, a Peace Works member, said all the political parties need to unite “to find a way to end this insane war.”

Fulmer noted nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died fighting in Iraq. He added that “several hundred thousand” Iraqi people have also been killed during the war and millions have been displaced.

May Saffar, a native of Iraq, said her country needs to be left alone.

Darius Shahinfar, another Gillibrand regional representative, said the fear is that if the United States leaves Iraq now there will be chaos in that country.

Saffar claimed this would not be the case.

“We are not as radical as the media portrays us,” Saffar said. She maintained that if the United States leaves Iraq it would bring an end to the “killings, the crimes, the bloodshed.”

Linda LeTendre of Saratoga Springs and Peace Works said she attended the vigil because, as a Christian, she feels the war is immoral and ungodly.

“I brought my Bible and my Book of Hours,” LeTendre said. She said she intended on staying the full seven hours.

Elliot Adams of Sharon Springs, president of the Veterans for Peace, said each new war involves more civilian deaths than the previous one.

Adams, who said he served as a U.S. Army paratrooper during Vietnam and Korea, said many soldiers who fought in Vietnam ended up opposing the war when they saw what was going on there.

“There has got to be a better way to help Iraq with its problems,” Fulmer said.

He said that country may not want democracy.

“That’s up to the Iraqi people,” he said.

Fulmer said the Peace Works organizers chose Gillibrand’s office because it represents the people of the 20th Congressional District.

“Our idea was to bring the message to the people,” Fulmer said.

Quoted Text

UAE forgives
billions of dollars
in Iraq debt
    ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates canceled billions of dollars of Iraqi debt Sunday and moved to restore a full diplomatic mission in Baghdad, evidence of Iraq’s improved security and growing acceptance of its Shiite-led government.
    The Abu Dhabi government announced the debt relief and the naming of a new UAE ambassador to Baghdad shortly after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki began a visit to the wealthy Gulf nation.
    The news was sure to bolster al-Maliki’s government, which has been urging Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors to forgive loans taken during Saddam Hussein’s regime and restore diplomatic relations.
    Al-Maliki, who has been in offi ce since May 2006, thanked the UAE for the debt cancellation, telling a meeting with local businessmen that it was a “swift and courageous” decision.
    The Emirates’ official news agency, WAM, said the debt was $4 billion not including interest. A UAE official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said the total debt was $7 billion when interest was added.

Quoted Text

Bush announces tour reductions for Iraq troops
Jennifer Loven - Associated Press Writer - 7/31/2008 7:20:00 AM

WASHINGTON - President Bush declared significant progress in the Iraq war Thursday, saying terrorists "are on the run" and that generally improved security likely will permit further U.S. troop reductions.

Standing on the Colonnade outside the Oval Office of the White House, Bush also announced that effective Thursday, the duration of troop tours in Iraq will be cut from 15 months to 12 months.

Bush said this reduction "will relieve the burden on our forces and it will make life easier for our wonderful military families."

Quoted Text

US Casualties in Iraq Lowest Ever, Lower Than Afghanistan for First Time
By Al Pessin
Wshington
01 August 2008
  
In July, the U.S. combat death toll in Iraq reached its lowest point since the war started, and, for the first time, was lower than the U.S. military death toll in Afghanistan. VOA's Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon.

According to the Pentagon, five U.S. troops were killed in combat in Iraq last month. A year ago, there were 66 American combat deaths.

Officials say the reduction in casualties reflects the improved security situation in the country, and the greater combat role being taken by Iraqi forces. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell calls it "stunning," but says casualty numbers are not the only measure for success or failure in Iraq.

"As heartening as that is, it is not the metric by which we measure success, but it is certainly an encouraging sign," he said.

The caution demonstrated by Morrell and other officials is based in part on the uneven pattern in U.S. casualty figures for Iraq in recent months. After three months in the middle of last year with more than 100 U.S. casualties, the numbers began to fall, reaching 23 in January. But U.S. casualties spiked several times after that, including an increase in June.

Still, the overall trend of the past 14 months has been downward, along with the number of insurgent attacks. U.S. officials are careful to say the security gains in Iraq are 'not irreversible,' but President Bush said Thursday they have a "degree of durability."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that could lead to further U.S. troop withdrawals. "The situation has improved dramatically. And I, personally, believe that there is a real possibility of some additional drawdowns as we look forward," he said.

Gates says he is awaiting recommendations from top military commanders in Iraq and at the Pentagon, which are expected by early September.

He says those recommendations about Iraq will also affect the U.S. ability to send more troops to Afghanistan, where violence has been rising, and 16 U.S. troops were killed in combat last month. That number is higher than the Iraq combat death toll for the first time since the Iraq war began five years ago.