By Jeremiah Horrigan

No one could say why it had taken so long, but officials with the Department of Veterans Affairs praised a new regulation that will make it easier for vets to claim and receive post-traumatic stress disorder disability benefits.

Several VA and federal health department officials and Rep. John Hall held a news conference Monday at the Castle Point campus of the VA Hudson Valley Health Care System to explain and extol the new rule.

When asked why the old regulation, which veterans groups have lobbied against for decades, took so long to revise, VA Undersecretary Michael Walcoff said it was a "difficult question."

"All I can tell you is the secretary (Eric Shinseki) felt very strongly about it," he said.

Hall, who has pushed for several years for the liberalized regulation, said the change was something to celebrate:

"Now, a veteran will no longer have to prove he'd been in the middle of an ambush — there are no stenographers in time of war," he said.