Veterans for Common Sense

Story of great American Heroes From The Washington Post  By Ernesto Londono

Published: September 23, 2012

U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Chris K. Raible, Commanding Officer of Marine Attack Squadron 211 aboard Marine Corps Air Station Yuma Ariz., was killed in an insurgent attack on Camp Bastion on Sept. 14, 2012. KEN KALEMKARIAN/U.S. MARINE CORPS

Lt. Col. Chris Raible, the commanding officer of Marine Attack Squadron 211, smiles after landing the first AV-8B Harrier jet from Marine Attack Squadron 211 aboard Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, July 1, 2012. Raible was killed during an insurgent attack on Bastion on Sept. 14, 2012. LISA TOURTELOT/U.S. MARINE CORPS

Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible was heading home to video chat with his wife after dinner when the first blasts rang out. The pops in the distance on Sept. 14 at Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan were harbingers of the most audacious Taliban attack on a major NATO base in the decade-long war.

Like most folks in the sprawling remote desert camp, Raible, 40, a Marine fighter pilot, faced two choices: seek cover or run toward the sound of gunfire.

“The difference between me and some people is that when they hear gunfire, they run. When I hear gunfire, I run to it,” the squadron commander had often told his Marines half in jest, recalled Maj. Greer Chambless, who was with Raible on the night of the attack.

That evening Raible did just that. Armed only with a handgun, he embarked on a course that cost him his life and probably averted even more devastating losses, witnesses and comrades said.

At least 15 heavily armed insurgents dressed in U.S. Army uniforms snuck inside the British-run airfield and incinerated six U.S. fighter jets, each worth about $25 million. The attack offered a sobering glimpse of the capabilities of the Taliban in Helmand Province, one of the key targets of the American troop surge that ended this week. It resulted in a staggering loss of military materiel and served as a reminder of the challenges of winding down the war by the end of 2014.

By daybreak the next morning, as smoke stopped billowing from the airfield and weary commanders gave the all-clear to U.S. Marines and British Special Forces troops who spent the night defending the camp, it wasn’t the threats raised by the infiltration on the minds of many people on the base. Rather, they were primarily struck by the actions of a tough and widely admired commander who returned home in a coffin this week.

This account of the attack on Camp Bastion and the response is drawn from interviews with four witnesses and a summary of the preliminary investigation by the Marine Corps.

The assailants, assembled into three teams of five fighters, cut a hole in the fence on the eastern end of the airfield at approximately 10:15 p.m. Wearing suicide vests and armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, they moved toward hangars where AV-8B Harrier jets were parked and began to open fire.

“We saw a rocket shoot into the sky,” said Lance Cpl. Danielle Ritter, 21, a combat logistics Marine who was unloading cargo from a truck when the assault began. “At first I thought it was a flare. Then we heard small arms fire.”

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In the distance, she saw the silhouette of the gunmen. “I didn’t realize who they were until another rocket lit up the sky,” she said, speaking on the phone from Afghanistan. “We just saw the sky light up and rockets go across the sky.”

The insurgents destroyed six Harriers, the type of aircraft Raible flew to provide backup for Marines on the ground, and significantly damaged two. Three fueling stations were also lit up.

About a mile away, Raible had just finished dinner with Chambless, one of his deputies. It had been a long but unremarkable day for the squadron commander. Hours earlier, Raible had flown with one of his officers, Capt. Kevin Smalley, 29. After landing, he went into the office to discuss the mission and take care of paperwork. Shortly after 10 p.m., as he did most nights, Raible headed to his living quarters to call his wife and three children in Yuma, Ariz.

“He spent a lot of time on the phone, as much as he could spare calling his wife and kids,” Smalley said. “One of his favorite parts of the day was being able to talk to them and see their faces.”

When it became clear Bastion was under attack, Raible threw on body armor and jumped in a vehicle with Chambless. Because his rifle was not nearby, the commander charged into the combat zone armed only with a handgun. The two men exchanged nary a word during the short drive as they scanned the landscape for insurgents. When they got to the flightline, Raible dashed into a maintenance room and began barking out orders to the Marines who would soon push the assailants back.

Backed by a handful of men, he ran toward another building to check whether the troops there were safe. Along the way, Raible and his men were attacked. He and Sgt. Bradley W. Atwell, 27, of Kokomo, Ind., died of wounds from an explosion, Lt. Col. Stewart Upton, a military spokesman, said. Chambless was devastated but not particularly surprised.

“It was very fitting that he was killed leading his men from the front,” the major said.

The men Raible led out of the maintenance building fought back, pushing one team of five assailants into a remote area of the airfield where they were killed in an air strike.

A Taliban statement said the intended purpose of the raid was to catch the foreign troops by surprise and attack them in bed.

Upton said Raible and his men helped prevent what could have been catastrophic losses. Nine of the remaining assailants were killed during the following hours and one was wounded.

“The feeling is that because of the aggressive counter we were able to contain them,” Upton said.

The week since the attack has been rough for the squadron’s Marines at Bastion as they have come to terms with the loss of their leader and most of the aircraft in the fleet.

“It’s been a busy week picking up the pieces,” said Smalley, the captain. “We’re focusing back on the mission at hand, getting Marines refocused on the fight. We have already resumed combat operations. We’re going to show the Taliban their little attack is not going to stop us.”

From Businessweek

By Jim Freking

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate blocked legislation Wednesday that would have established a $1 billion jobs program putting veterans back to work tending to the country’s federal lands and bolstering local police and fire departments.

Republicans said the spending authorized in the bill violated limits that Congress agreed to last year. Democrats fell two votes shy of the 60-vote majority needed to waive the objection, forcing the legislation back to committee.

Supporters loosely modeled their proposal after the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps used during the Great Depression to put people to work planting trees, building parks and constructing dams. They said the latest monthly jobs report, showing a nearly 11 percent unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, merited action from Congress.

Democratic lawmakers turned to the legislation shortly before they’ll adjourn for the finals weeks of this year’s election campaigns. The bill had little chance of passing the House this Congress, but it still allowed senators to appeal to a key voting bloc.

“(With) a need so great as unemployed veterans, this is not the time to draw a technical line on the budget,” said Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the bill’s lead sponsor, who faces a competitive re-election battle.

Republicans said the effort to help veterans was noble, but the bill was flawed nevertheless.

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said the federal government already has six job-training programs for veterans and there is no way to know how well they are working. He argued that making progress on the country’s debt was the best way to help veterans in the long-term.

“We ought to do nothing now that makes the problem worse for our kids and grandkids,” Coburn said.

Democratic officials did not have an estimate for how many veterans would be hired as a result of the legislation. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said much would depend upon the number of applicants. She noted that more than 720,000 veterans are unemployed across the nation, including 220,000 veterans who have served since Sept. 11. She said putting veterans back to work was the cost of war.

“Instead of meeting us halfway, we have been met with resistance. Instead of saying yes to the nearly 1 million unemployed veterans, it seems some on the other side have spent the last week and a half seeking any way to say no,” Murray said.

A handful of Republicans joined with Democrats in voting to waive the objection to the bill: Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Dean Heller of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Maine’s Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Brown and Heller are also in tough re-election contests.

Heller said he was proud to support the bill.

“After everything our veterans have done for us, the least we can do is make sure they are afforded every opportunity to thrive here at home,” Heller said.

From the NYT.com

Published: September 16, 201

If you made a list of things lawmakers of both parties profess to value at all times — like “jobs,” “opportunity,” “veterans,” “law enforcement,” “firefighters,” “safe streets,” “small business” — and plugged them into a Congressional bill-writing app, you would probably end up with something like the Veterans Job Corps Act of 2012.

The bill, sponsored by Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, would hire veterans as firefighters and police officers and for conservation jobs in national parks and on other public lands, through grants to federal departments and agencies and contracts with state and local governments and private organizations. It would give a lift to veteran entrepreneurs and contractors in various ways, like making it easier for veterans to use their military training to qualify for civilian professional licenses.

The bill gives priority to those who served on or after 9/11, with good reason: the jobless rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan hit 10.9 percent in August, compared with 8.1 percent nationally. This is a time of persistent homelessness and unemployment among veterans, and record suicides among veterans and active-duty service members, many of them stressed by the burdens of two long wars. It makes sense for the 99 percent of Americans to find new ways to pay their debt to the 1 percent who serve in uniform.

To most people, Senator Murray’s bill would seem like one decent way to do that. But not if you’re one of those Republicans in Washington who thinks it’s more important in an election year to deny Democrats a success or accomplishment of any kind.

This has led to some wacky maneuvers in the Senate. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, perhaps forgetting where he worked, denounced the legislation as a “political exercise.” He also called it a waste of time, since the House wasn’t going to pass it anyway, and objected to the cost (estimated at $1 billion for the next five years, though Ms. Murray’s aides say the program will be paid for by recovering more money from tax-delinquent Medicare providers and forcing big tax deadbeats to pay up before receiving passports).

“Where is our honor? Where is our valor? Where is our sacrifice?” thundered Mr. Coburn, suggesting that giving jobs to veterans was an affront to American values. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, went further, saying he would block the bill until Pakistan freed Shakil Afridi, the doctor who helped the United States find Osama bin Laden.

Ms. Murray has tried to make her bill as bipartisan as possible. When Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, proposed his own set of provisions, she folded them all into the bill, which is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday. We’ll know then whether good sense prevailed, or the wheels have come completely off the Congressional machine