On Wednesday, Oct 13, the Veterans for American Power pulled out of St Louis in its brilliant Navy blue bus, wrapped with the names of 66 cities and towns in the 22 states that the bus tours will visit this month.  

Our busload of veterans,  nicknamed "Team Alpha," assembled in the early morning darkness for a 6 am departure from St. Louis to Jefferson City, the capital of the Show Me State. There the vets were met by a variety of media, including the CBS station KRCG-TV, the Jefferson City News Tribune and St Louis Public Radio, KWMU, and the Brownfield Farm Radio network.

With the state capital dome looming in the background, the vets lined up outside the bus on a damp and gray  fall morning. Billy Froeschner, an Army vet from Missouri, told the group of reporters,"We need to bring jobs back to Missouri and we think changing to a clean energy economy is vital to our national security. We want clean American power and we want it soon."

Others vets in the group chimed in. "We don't need to send more of our brothers and sisters to war for energy that we can create right here in the US," said Raphael Noboa, an Army veteran of a tour in Iraq. "People need to wake up to the fact that every time we use oil to power our cars, we're not only polluting the environment and increasing the threats from climate disruption, but we're putting our own national security interests at risk.

After a quick breakfast at a local coffee house, we climbed back onto our cozy home on wheels and headed to Kansas City. There we made a quick stop to talk to a group of citizens and several local reporters from the KCTribune.com and The Pitch.com. at Liberty Memorial park. As the vets braced themselves in a chilly wind, they  made the case that clean energy was a clean and present danger.

"The Pentagon is already acting on this because our military commanders realize the time to act is now," said Marilyn Weakley, an Army veteran who served as a squad leader in Afghanistan. "That's reason enough for us to take action and create energy independence to make us safer."

The vets then jumped back on the bus and we headed north to talk about clean energy and national security with Ken Newton, a science reporter with the St Joseph Press. But that wasn't the last stop of the day. We still had a two hour drive ahead to a 6:30 town hall meeting at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

CBS affiliate KOLN filmed the discussion as Marine Corp veteran Matt Victoriano, who served two tours as a sniper in Iraq, told a group of students, veterans and local environmentalists that national security threats were the main reason they made this bus tour. "We didn't just come here to talk about clean energy and a clean environment. , , I came because I saw with my own two eyes what men and women are dying for over there. As a Marine, I can tell you don't wait until you're 100 percent sure of anything on the battlefield. The time to get off our oil economy and switch to clean energy sources is now."

It was after 8 pm when the weary vets reached their hotel and we all thought about getting a decent dinner under our belts. The next day would be another long day on the road. But none of the vets were complaining. They were soldiers and Marines after all.