General: Embarrassing = Secret (Updated)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was fit to be tied the other day. Troops in Iraq were about to get their tours extended by three months. But soldiers and their families didn't hear about the holdover from their commanders. They learned about it in the newspaper, or on TV; someone had leaked word to the press.

"Some very thoughtless person in this building made the unilateral decision to deny the Army the opportunity to notify unit commanders who could then talk to their troops 48 hours before we made a public announcement," Gates fumed. "And I can't tell you how angry it makes many of us."

An embarrassing situation, to be sure. In bad taste? You bet. But was it a security breach? Gates, for one, never said anything of the sort. It was up to General Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, to make that rather dubious connection.

In an internal memo to Army headquarters staff, obtained by the DANGER ROOM, Cody growled that "the disclosure of... unclassified sensitive information into the public domain prior to... unauthorized release endangers the lives of our Soldiers. The Secretary of Defense recently stated that the official announcement of the extension of unit deployments was compromised by 'some thoughtless person in the building (the Pentagon).'"

*Our adversaries focus on obtaining our classified and unclassified sensitive information from the public domain such as the Internet and the media to gain knowledge of our capabilities, activities, limitations, and intentions... *

We are an Army of a Nation at war. We must protect information. Lives depend on it.

Now, everyone understands that secrets are necessary in wartime. And no one wants real secrets to wind up in hostile hands. But we're talking about a slightly-early release of unclassified announcement here -- not some kind of closely-held information on which "lives depend."

That seems like a distinction most reasonable people can make, right?

UPDATE: In the comments, Alison Bettencourt -- Gen. Cody's public affairs officer, but speaking for herself -- hits back.

The leak of the unit extensions deprived Army leaders of their first and foremost mission -- taking care of Soldiers. I.e., this leak didn't allow them to lead... For Soldiers who are about to go out on patrol, in harms way, to have to worry about policy changes, unanswered questions, and disappointed and confused phone calls and emails from their families absolutely puts their lives at risk. They need to be focused on the fight.

To which one commenter replies, "I've met a lot of soldiers over the years, and not one of them came close to being the kind of whining, weak-minded child some people here seem to think they are."