The second of a two-part series.

Real-life action star Rudy Reyes from the best-selling book and HBO series Generation Kill talks to us about his experience as a soldier in Iraq and the difficulties of becoming an actor.

Why did you join the Marines?

I thought it would be the next expression of the warrior mindset. Naively speaking, at the time, I remember I was younger and I thought I could fight for those who couldn't fight for themselves. At the time, if you recall, there was a war going on in Croatia. There was ethnic cleansing of the Muslims there. And I knew people were being murdered. I knew there were snipers killing women and children and the word, politically, was that [the U.S. was] going there to fight. So I joined, because there had been reports and I had seen documentary footage of children who were killed and many children who were left alone after their parents were murdered, and there was no one there to care for them. So I wanted to sign up because I thought we were going to go there and fight [for them].

You've said you didn't feel you were making a difference in Iraq. Why?

Well, you know, I was one of the very first ones in 2001 to Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was one of the very first ones to invade Iraq in 2003. Then I went back again in 2004 and 2005, so I've seen the war on terror develop over three of four years. And, by the time I left Iraq the last time, by the time I left for my final tour, everything was coming apart at the seams in the area I was in. I was in Fallujah and Ramadi and we were doing a lot of damage to the countryside and to the infrastructure – and to the enemy – but we were losing their hearts and minds.

We were ill-equipped to police and provide security – remember, I'm not a policeman, I'm a freakin' shock troop. And I saw women, children and elderly men suffering. One family in particular had given me their home and protected me at night while I used a water tower of theirs for sniper position. They were finally found out by some faction and their home was bombed. The water tower was destroyed. It destroyed the water [supply] for the entire village. It also destroyed their electricity. When I made a patrol to their residence to help them, I was told to stand down and return to base because, quite frankly, we didn't have anything in position to help them with. You start seeing the cracks through everything. So I wasn't making a difference for the better anymore, if anything, I was just protecting the status quo.

The difference I was made – being as violent, creative, intelligent and aggressive as possible – was that I was able to bring back my men alive, because not everybody did that. Outside of that, I didn't do anything for Iraq. It's not something you can walk away from when you look in the mirror.

What did you learn while you were there?

There was no such thing as democracy, those elections and all that, they're just P.R. movements. A lot of people don't know that there are tens of different tribes just in one city, much less in the country. There are different subsets of the Muslim religion. Each fiefdom is based upon a mosque or a sheik. These people have been living in their clans for thousands of years, and only in the last 80 years has "Iraq" existed as a country. After WWI, the English arbitrarily drew it up because they were going to use it as a territory in which they could leverage the Middle East and trade. So in a sense, these different villages and tribes and clans have been smashed together and are supposedly "Iraqi." Well, they don't see it like that. So they don't just get along so easily. They're not just one people. And we didn't know that. We didn't know how deeply divided some of their political, economic and religious lines were when we went in there.

Now, we're just trying to do damage control and keep the thing from completely falling apart so eventually we can get out of there.

Why do you think the U.S. invaded Iraq?

In my opinion, we've always been in Iraq – from day one – to gain control and leverage the region in relations to energy. In relations to the business of energy worldwide. Leveraging the oil business and energy business worldwide for American interests and American business partners.

When I say this, I'm not talking about Americans like myself. Guess what kind of ties I have to oil and big business? Zero. So don't misunderstand that's it's all Americans. The [U.S.] is there to leverage and control the region for energy business, construction business and security business. For American big business and their partners, that's what we're there for.

Our higher ups just imagined that the Iraqis would embrace democracy and embrace everything and then turn right over and in a sense, become kind of like Puerto Rico for us. But it didn't work out that way because we didn't fully understand the culture. We didn't understand it and we're paying for it now.

Was it easy to play yourself in the HBO series Generation Kill?

It's kind of hard, man, even if you're playing yourself. Because guess what happens when that camera comes on? You get self conscious, you don't know if you have mocos coming out of your nose, you're trying to remember your dialogue and make it sound natural. So, no, it's still challenging. What I learned to do is become an actor out there. I was out there for seven months and I learned how to do it.

In my opinion, every actor or actress... the best ones are themselves. No matter what character they're playing, it's the intangibles of the individual's experience that comes through: the dialogue, the eye connection, the action. The masters of the craft are themselves, but most people in the business think they gotta put on devices and make up things and somehow "act." Well, the real acting is when you pull away all those barriers, and that's the hard stuff. That same kind of vulnerability reminded me very much of fighting, where you're able to win it all or lose it all right there, right then.

What do you hope people will take away after watching "Generation Kill"?

Iraq is a very dynamic and confusing place. There is no right and wrong and there is no good guy and bad guy. What it is... is young men doing their best to fight hard to protect their unit, to protect themselves and somehow come home alive. You can't deal with the horrors of combat if you don't first kill everybody you have to, until you survive combat. It's a lot harder to deal with the horrors of combat in the aftermath if you live, because you know what, you don't have to deal with anything if you die. Anybody who criticizes the United States Marine Corps. and recon Marines for being too violent and being so aggressive – well that's what we have to do.

What I want people to take away from Generation Kill is for people to say, "OK, these guys are smart young men who are the best of America's Marine Corps, but they are in an impossible mission." They are to be storm troopers, reapers and cut their way all the way through Iraq but at the same time be humanitarians. And be gentle with civilians. It's almost impossible.

In my heart, I've always been more gentle than I have been hard. No matter how tough my background was as a kid, I never quite became hard. And I used to think that was a weakness in me, but I realized it was my biggest strength.

The first of a two-part series.

Rudy Reyes is a real-life action star. The former Marine sergeant served three tours of duty in Iraq and was also deployed to Pakistan and Afghanistan. His bravado and bravery was captured first in the best-selling book Generation Kill and, this past summer, in the HBO series by the same name for which he was both an adviser and one of the lead actors. The TV version was produced David Simon of "The Wire."

We asked Rudy how a shy kid from San Diego ended up in the middle of a bloody war and how he's repping for his Marines brothers.

You've said Bruce Lee movies inspired you. How?

Well, you know, it was the '70s and my father, Rudy Sr., he had been out of the Marine Corps. for a just a little bit. He took me to the drive-in and I got to see a double feature, Enter the Dragon and Return of the Dragon with Chuck Norris.

And it's very interesting that you mention it. I was at the gym ... one of the guys who works at the desk, he's a big fan of mine. He put on screen saver, a photograph of me with my hands up in a fighting posture and a then next to it, a photograph of Bruce Lee. He has his shirt torn and his hands up, it was like a "compare and contrast," and it was really cool.

That's what inspired you to get into martial arts?

Something like that, yeah, I wanted to fight for people that were weaker and couldn't fight for themselves. I wanted to protect people against bullies. I wanted to stand for something and I wanted to be very strong. To me, that's what I thought being a man was about. I was very young, and you see things in ideals when you're young, so I thought that was the ultimate expression of being a warrior and being a protector. And that's what I wanted to do.

Did you know how tough the road was going to be?

I did. I did, even then. I was about five years old. In my mind I had an imagination about what Zen Buddhism would be and what enlightenment looked like. In my mind, enlightenment looked like a form of yourself in energy rising up to the skies. To me, at four or five years old, I imagined that's what nirvana was, that's what enlightenment was. Because you know, they express and talk about those terms in Chinese martial arts films. And, that's what I imagined as a small boy and I decided to pursue it.

What challenges did you overcome growing up?

The hardest was that you learn very quickly when you grow up in poor neighborhoods and rough neighborhoods, that being a good guy is not exalted by any means. Actually, you're encouraged not to be a good guy. You're encouraged to be loyal, you're encouraged to keep quiet when you're supposed to keep quiet. Being a good guy? No, that's not encouraged. Stand up for what's right? Not encouraged.

When you grow up in the inner city, what's encouraged is being stronger than the other guy so you can prey on the weak and protect yourself from those who are stronger than you. You search for the easiest way out and get as much as you can when you can get it, and that's a little bit different than the warrior ethos. The warrior ethos is about discipline, it's about sacrifice, it's about a lot hard work that you may never get credit for. It's about those kind of ideals.

So there was a discrepancy. I didn't want to be a cholo, I didn't want to be in gangs. My dad was gone by the time I was about five years old. I was the oldest kid [in our family] and I realized real quick – because there's nobody protecting me – that I didn't want to be like the kids who were kicking my ass and stomping me down and taking my lunch money. I remember what that was like, and I had two little brothers to raise. I didn't want that happening to them, so I had to prepare them and strengthen them and strengthen myself. I didn't want to be exactly what was going on in my environment. It just didn't sit right with me.

What kept you on that path?

Well, you know, my little brothers Michael and Cesar. Also, I was a voracious reader and I still am. I studied history and was voracious with it.

Well, I guess maybe because in real life there is no fairness. There is no such thing as fair play or fairness. I was seeking to create it in my life. By creating it in my life through competition and training, by pursuing the ideal of the warrior spirit, it gave me a purpose and it gave me hope. I wasn't gonna go to college because I could barely make it through school. I was working all of the time, trying to survive. I was always tired [from work]. When I was younger, I was in a boys home and it was really hard place. Before that, I was on the street; my brothers and I were on the street. Often times, we had no electricity or running water in our home because it was turned off. My father wouldn't come home for months at a time.

I was trying to create something, and it started with myself, so that's why I [started] martial arts, bodybuilding, competition, that's why it meant something to me.

End of part one. Tomorrow: Reyes on joining the Marines and the Iraq war.

Thomas Insel is worried. He's the nation's top mental health official and he believes "the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths.'' In other words, in the coming years, more soldiers could die from mental health problems at home than died in combat.

According to a report by the RAND corporation, 300 thousand of the 1.5 million troops – one out of five – who served in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from depression or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Veterans with PTSD have a hard time sleeping, feel disconnected from reality and their loved ones, and can have terrifying flashbacks. For some, it leads to breakdowns and even suicide.

While PTSD can be treated, experts warn not enough veterans are being treated. Some government officials and veteran advocacy groups warn that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) does not have enough resources – money, doctors, and hospitals – to take on this growing mental health crisis. A lawsuit filed against the VA by attorney Arturo Gonzalez on behalf of two veterans' rights groups alleges that the military is aware of the problem and attempted to hide it. Internal VA e-mails revealed that an estimated 1,000 veterans (including WWII and Vietnam) attempt suicide every month.

The VA counters it has increased its mental health budget (from $3.2 to $3.5 billion) and recently hired nearly four thousand specialists to deal with PTSD and related illnesses. Senior military official Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged the severity of PTSD: "It's way past time, some seven years into this war, that we recognize the toll it's taking inside our minds, as well as outside our bodies."

Ex-Navy officer Matthew Diaz kept it real. Now he may go to jail.

Raised in San Bernardino, California, Lieutenant Commander Diaz had a rough childhood. His parents divorced when he was six and he attended nine different schools before starting junior high. By the time he was 17, Diaz had dropped out of high school and was living in a motel after his father, a nurse, was convicted of murdering his elderly patients – a conviction Diaz helped to fight by investigating the court transcripts.

Determined to turn his life around, Diaz enlisted in the Army, earning an associate's degree in law enforcement and a bachelor's in criminology. He eventually left the Army to pursue a law degree in the Navy, partly inspired by Latino actor Jimmy Smits, who appeared in the popular '80s TV drama L.A. Law.

Recognized for his outstanding service record, Diaz joined the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps (the Navy's lawyers) and was assigned to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in 2004 to investigate allegations of prisoner abuse. The infamous military prison, nicknamed "Gitmo," houses suspected terrorists, all designated enemy combatants – a designation that strips them of many legal rights. Just before Diaz was assigned to Guantánamo, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the detainees at the prison had the right of habeas corpus – the ability to challenge his or her detention.

In early 2005, as Diaz was nearing the end of his six-month tour of duty, he came to believe Guantánamo detainees were still being denied their rights: they were being held in secret, their complaints were suppressed, and the military was failing to document their conditions.

Shocked and disgusted, Diaz copied the names of all 551 prisoners being held in Guantánamo; the names had not been marked secret though they should have been. On his last day, Diaz stuffed this list into a Valentine's Day card and sent it to Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer at the liberal Center for Constitutional Rights. Diaz wanted to make the names public so the detainees could dispute their detention.

Olshansky, who had previously requested the names of prisoners from the federal government without success, thought the valentine was a hoax. She contacted a federal agent who traced the leak back to Diaz. Within weeks, he was court-martialed for "improper disclosure of classified information" and was later sentenced to six months in prison.

For exposing government secrets, the 42-year-old Diaz, who served in the military for 19 years, has been called both a traitor and a hero. Diaz is currently appealing his sentence and says he may have gone about things the wrong way but is certain he had to do something: “I knew that if I didn’t do anything, nobody else was going to.” He is now reviewing the transcripts of his hearing — as he once reviewed those of his father.