The Extension

Or "Leaking on the Troops"...

For those who weren't aware: someone leaked the story:

Q Could you just clarify, you're changing the policy establishing an upper limit of a deployment. But does that mean that all the units that are deployed to Iraq are now extended -- all the Army units are now extended to 15 months?

And can you also tell us why you're making this announcement publicly now at the same time that the troops and their families are hearing it, because normally that's done -- they get notified first.

SEC. GATES: All the units that are there and all the units that will deploy are now extended -- will be extended to 15 months...

In terms of why we're announcing it simultaneously with the unit commanders, I'll be very blunt. Some very thoughtless person in this building made the unilateral decision yesterday 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. And I can't tell you how angry it makes many of us that one individual would create potentially so much hardship not only for our service men and women, but their families, by giving -- by letting them read about something like this in the newspapers.

Anger and dark humor as U.S. troops learn of longer tours

Word of the extension arrived shortly after midnight at the rambling, two-story country villa near the Euphrates River that the soldiers from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, have turned into a joint American-Iraqi military base.

The news landed almost by accident - First Sergeant Jody Heikkinen spotted a story about it on the Internet - and the company officers were caught off guard. "We're trying to figure out what it means," said Captain Chris Calihan, 31, commander of Bravo Company.

"I was praying for a year" deployment, said Audrey Frohnhoefer, whose husband, Capt. Tom Frohnhoefer, is serving his third tour in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga. "The worst part about the whole thing is that we know what to expect, and we don't want to do it," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Savannah, Ga., as her infant and toddler daughters cried in the background.
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Congressional Democrats railed yesterday against the decision to extend Army tours, calling it a further buildup of a war that has no end in sight. They called on Bush to change what they termed a "failed strategy" in Iraq that continues to stress U.S. forces to the breaking point.

General Petraeus wrote this letter to military family members.

And you won't read about it in the papers, but deployed GIs are now finding out what really happened.