Good that this is happening now, but the article completely ommitted the reality that this kind of education comes far too late for some of our mentally ill Vets who have wound up dead at the hands of law enforcement.

“A suspect was shot and killed by one of my officers,” Gillespie said. “Any time we have a fatal use of law enforcement, it’s a sad day.” MyNews3.com identified the man as Stanley Gibson, whose wife, Rondha, said he was battling post-traumatic stress disorder and brain cancer from serving in the Gulf War. "He would go into paranoid delusions, thinking people were after him," she said. "He would get scared. He would get severe anxiety."

But I have to ask why so many of our Vets from campaigns like those in Afghanistan wind up, when discharged, with a huge array of mental illnesses.

And the only possible conclusion I can come to is that, perhaps, when they were in country for a while, they recognized that the United States was not on the right side of history in these military misadventures. What the police call "mental illness" may be moral outrage.

To be forced to fight and kill on command, when you are, at heart, a moral or even spiritual individual, after having come to that awareness, cannot help but create moral and emotional damage.

I'm not saying that all wars are wrong. I am the very proud daughter of a Dad who enlisted - disabled -in World War II because he understood clearly that Japan and Germany had to stopped. I am very painfully aware that any aggressor who started a war in the last century got beaten up, big-time. And this is why the US's pre-emptive wars in the 21st century concern me deeply, morally and spiritually.

What was "won" in the war against Iraq?!? Exxon-Mobil got their oil development deals, period, end of discussion.

Iraq, the country which formerly enjoyed the highest standard of living in the Muslim Middle East, has been utterly destroyed by the US invasion and occupation, and is on the brink of sectarian civil war.

And who is "winning" the 10 year and counting in the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan?

The drug lords (and the banks which launder their money) and the defense contractors, that's who.

Understanding that what we have had in these wars is publicly funded war, ultimately for private profit, would be enough to make sensible people at least very angry and upset. Add to that the pressures of combat, and you have all the elements necessary for a perfect storm of mental illness for our returning Veterans.