NEWSBYJENNIFER RAWLINGS

Everyone on the planet seems to know Christine O’Donnell’s thoughts on masturbation. She headed an “Anti-masturbation campaign” and spoke about it on MTV in 1996 on the television show “Sex in the 90’s”. Christine - who is running for Senator in the state of Delaware - has been a “gift” to comedians across the country as they debate on stage whether or not she was a “witch” (as she proclaimed on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect”).  As a comic, I am grateful to Christine for all that she has done to create laughs for this great country, but Christine is not the only political candidate in this mid-term election who appears to be more fiction than substance.

Sadly, most candidates are lacking in substance and their campaign ads are more likely to tell what is wrong with their opponent instead of where they stand on the issues. I live in Los Angeles where the airwaves are full of campaign attack ads throughout most of the day. All the commercials show an out of focus bad picture of the opponent with horrible music and a few sound bites with a cheesy voice-over. Missing from all of these ads are the candidates’ platform and their stance on real issues.

The most important issues to voters in these elections are the economy, healthcare and the deficit. Large numbers of Americans are still out of work and it is a daily struggle to put food on the table. People are losing their jobs, their homes and their healthcare in one fell swoop and sometimes it seems like Washington, D.C is “printing money on demand.” I share these concerns with voters but I also have another worry – the wars.

Every day soldiers come home from Iraq and Afghanistan and attempt to join the civilian workforce. Thousands of these soldiers have permanent and severe disabilities that are easy to identify and accommodate. For example, an employer can see and understand the young soldier that loses both of his arms in a roadside bomb. The employer can supply a special voice recognition keyboard, and of course there are often prosthetics available to replace the part of the body that is missing.

But what happens to the soldiers whose wounds are more difficult to spot and how do they fit into the workplace?

The Rand Corporation, in its study “Invisible Wounds of War,” referred to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) as two of the debilitating and dangerous hidden wounds that face soldiers. These types of wounds often go unnoticed by friends, family members, co-workers and fellow soldiers.

PTSD and TBI contribute to an increased suicide rate among soldiers and interfere with the soldier’s ability to have a normal life and blend into society.

Take Jessie. He just returned from Iraq; this was his third tour. At night he wakes up in a pool of sweat, sudden noises make him jump, and he gets very anxious in a crowd. Jessie is irritable and has mood swings. His mind constantly replays the scenes of war and he is overwhelmed with guilt. Every day Jessie thinks about his buddies that were killed and the devastation that he witnessed.

When I first heard the news about “Reverend” Terry Jones’ plans to host an “International Burn a Koran Day” on September 11, I felt sick to my stomach. His plan is to host this event at his tiny church of only 50 parishioners on the outskirts of Gainesville, Florida.

I believe in God, and the God I believe in does not condone hatred or intolerance. My stomach tightened and cramped as I thought about Mr. Jones, with the wiry handlebar moustache, encouraging his flock to destroy the holy book of another faith. This is poison, and it begs the question whether Mr. Jones should be referred to as a Reverend or a pastor, because those terms imply spiritual counselor.

The staging of this event on September 11 is particularly sad. Like everyone else, I will never forget the morning of September 11, 2001. I live in Los Angeles and I was up very early that morning packing lunches for my four children. I didn’t have the television, radio, or computer on because I love the edge of the morning when the house is still and quiet and I am the only one awake. After the lunches were packed, I went into my children’s bedrooms and starting waking them up for school. One by one my kids dragged themselves to the kitchen table and sleepily scooped up cereal and waffles. As I was pouring another bowl of cereal for my youngest the phone rang. It was a friend of mine that, in a panicked voice,  instructing me, “You have to go turn on the television right now. Something terrible has happened.” Her voice cracked and she hung up the phone.

Soldiers in Iraq are packing up their rucksacks, turning in their Kevlar and helmets, cleaning their guns, and piling into C-130 aircraft to fly home. On the long flight home many of the soldiers will pass the time on the flight talking about all the things they are going to do when they get home. Some will get married, many will start a family, go back to school, lay on the beach. Soldiers will salivate talking about grilling a steak with corn on the cob and washing it down with an ice-cold beer. There will be as many “when I get back home plans” as there are soldiers.

Some of the soldiers will be returning to their childhood bedrooms at their parents' house, and the high-school memorabilia will still be on the walls because these young soldiers went straight from high school to boot camp. The older reservists and National Guard will go back to their “regular jobs” as accountants, mechanics, waitresses, doctors, and stay-at home moms.

All of the soldiers both young and old will be reflecting on what they saw during their deployment in Iraq, including many of the soldiers with multi deployments in the seven and half year war.

They will be thinking about the 4, 416 soldiers that have died in Iraq. Maybe one of the dead was a bunkmate, or a brother. They will think about the 31,882 injured. They will think about their comrade that lost their leg, their arm and their face. They will think about the soldier that lost their eyesight, or hearing, or the many soldiers with traumatic brain injuries.

Every country in the world “has a mob,” but in Mexico it seems “the mob has a country.”

The drug cartels in Mexico have infiltrated the government, the police, the army, and now they are calling the shots with the press.

There is a new word floating around: “Narco-censorship.” Narco-censorship is when reporters and editors, out of fear, craft the news and their reporting to satisfy the Mexican drug cartel.  The powerful and deadly Mexican drug cartels are threatening and intimidating journalists into printing what the gangs want, instead of the truth.

Approximately 30 journalists have been killed or vanished since President Felipe Calderon began his battle with the drug cartel in December of 2006. It is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a reporter. Journalists regularly receive  death threats when they print a story that drug traffickers don’t like. One reporter that was savagely murdered had a note attached to his body that read, “This happened to me for writing too much.”

One of the deadliest places in the world right now is Mexico. This spring in the resort city of Acapulco, with its sandy white beaches and warm pacific waters, 17 people were murdered in a single day by a drug cartel, four of them decapitated.

Mexican drug gangs have rolled severed heads across dance floors in local bars to announce their presence in a region. In recent months, dozens of people have been decapitated all over Mexico with their heads placed on poles in front of government buildings to send a warning. Grenades have been thrown into celebration parades, police commanders have been assassinated in broad daylight.  The drug cartels often film the horrific killings and post the videos on various websites, leaving warning notes on the bodies of the dead and tortured. Eight journalists have been killed this year in Mexico and five more journalists were recently kidnapped.

According to the Mexican national intelligence service, over 28,000 people have died in drug cartel related violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and began cracking down on drug traffickers. In a statement on Wednesday President Calderon said about the drug cartels: “Their business is no longer just the traffic of drugs. Their business is to dominate everyone else.”

Every day, every month, every year soldiers are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe disabilities. Some are missing legs, or arms, many have brain injuries, or suffer from chronic pain. Despite the obstacles that a disability presents, many soldiers with disabilities must continue to work for another forty or fifty years.

Veterans with disabilities often have ongoing doctor appointments and rehabilitation, making a job in the traditional work force very difficult. So many veterans are opting to start their own business.

Entrepreneurship Bootcamp For Veterans with Disabilities is non-profit organization founded in 2007 by J.Michael Hayne. The mission statement of EBV, according to their web site, is “The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) offers cutting edge, experiential training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 veterans with disabilities resulting from their service to our country. The EBV is designed to open the door to business ownership for our veterans by 1) developing your skills in the many steps and activities associated with launching and growing a small business, and by 2) helping you leverage programs and services for veterans and people with disabilities in a way that furthers your entrepreneurial dreams.”

Hayne served fourteen years in the Air Force before starting the bootcamp. EBV is an all expense paid program (including airfare and hotel accommodations) that is funded by donations.

The first bootcamp took place at Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. There were 20 veterans at the first bootcamp. Fourteen members from the first bootcamp started their own businesses, and four of those businesses have generated revenues of over a million dollars a year.

I have not yet culled through the 92,000 documents on the war in Afghanistan that WikiLeaks released over the weekend, and in all honesty I probably never will read all the documents. I have not yet determined whether I agree with the actions of WikiLeaks to release the confidential documents. On the one hand, you could argue that there is a moral obligation to shine a light on the injustices that go on in the world - and I thoroughly agree that as citizens we are obligated to speak the truth. However, there is another side to the argument, and that is the responsibility of “ethical journalism” which involves tedious fact checking and weighing the risks.

The bottom line on "WikiPapers" is no big surprise. After all, the nine-year old war in Afghanistan is a mess and that has been common knowledge for many years.

A couple years ago I was in a chow hall in Kyrgyzstan returning from a trip to Afghanistan. I sat down next to a tall, lanky Colonel with close-cropped hair. As we ate our thick, room temperature chili with lots of Fritos sprinkled on top (to both add to and mask the flavor of the food) we started talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The articulate Colonel had served in the United States Army for over twenty years. He had been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He understood momentum, morale, purpose and strategy, and at that chance meeting over chili the soft-spoken Colonel informed me that the war in Afghanistan had already been lost.

Fifteen years ago, the bloody war in Bosnia had been raging for three long years. Upwards of 250,000 people were killed, over a million were displaced and countless numbers of women were raped and tortured during the Bosnian war.

Srebrenica is a small mountain town in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Like many cities in Bosnia, it was a divided town with both Serbs and Muslims living there. The UN had declared Srebrenica a “safe zone” in 1993.

In July 1995, while Dutch UN Peacekeepers were keeping watch, 8,000 men and boys were systematically murdered by Bosnian Serb troops simply because they were Muslim.

Just this weekend thousands of people watched as 775 newly identified victims of the genocide were buried.

Fifteen years after the horrific murders, mothers and widows in Srebrenica are still asking the same question: How could this happen? How could 8,000 men and boys be killed while the UN watched? Why?

I love American soldiers. I hate war, but I love the men and woman in uniform. American soldiers come from all walks of life and many of them dedicate their lives to the service of others.

Currently there are approximately 200,000 troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They risk their lives every single day. Many of the more dangerous jobs fall on the shoulders of the privates and specialists. In most cases, these troops range in age from 18-22.

I have been entertaining the troops for over ten years. I have been to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and the violence in both countries is terrifying. The soldiers sleep in tents, connexes, c-huts, b-huts, and sometimes in ditches. Hot showers are a luxury, and so are the porta-pottys.

These soldiers live on the extreme. There is the fear and chaos of a firefight accompanied by the doldrums and depression of 365 days spent sleeping in a tent, and the monotony of down time.

Entertainment is exceedingly important in helping with the moral of the troops. Soldiers mark their yearlong deployments with entertainment highlights: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, comedy shows, country singers, or a meet and greet with a famous actor.