The OPSEC concerns of blogs, e-mail, mail and any other communication are very real. A private letter if it contains material that can compromises security can cause a military member to be court martial. Does the military stop personal letters? Sometimes. However, for the sake of moral they allow it most of the time. There is a trade off that must be managed. The Army spends a great deal of time and effort informing their members of what is appropriate and what is not. If a member has a question about it, they are advised to seek guidance since they are held liable for their communications. We don’t need to send a good soldier to jail for lack of poor judgment in communication.

The military tends to be secretive in nature and its members who spend much time in sensitive areas tend to be secretive in nature. It is or could be a tough deal to live with the fact that a stupid comment ended up getting someone killed.

That's my hunch as well. That's why I use the verb "claim" rather than "says" or some variant.

Incidentally, that's why I hate when supposedly objective press reports use the word "claim," because it gives the impression (to me at least) that they're calling the person a liar.

Q: If a soldier has to consult his supervisor or an OPSEC officer every time he wants e-mail home or put up a blog posting, doesn't that effectively kill the practice? What supervisor is going to have the time to check all of that material?

The regulation says that a Soldier or other U.S. Army personnel must consult with their immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer prior to posting information in a public forum. However, this is where unit commander or organization leadership specifies in orders, policies, or directives how this will be done. Some units may require that Soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes with occasional spot checks after an initial review. Other units may require a review before every posting. A private e-mail message to Family Members is not considered posting information in a public forum, but U.S. Army personnel are informed that unclassified e-mails can be intercepted and that they shouldn’t write anything that they wouldn’t say on an unsecure phone. While it is not practical to check all communication, especially private communication, the U.S. Army trusts that Soldiers and U.S. Army personnel will do the right things to maintain proper security when they understand their role in it.

(Emphasis mine)

Say what you want about how commanders can _choose_ to implement it, the actual wording of the reg is fairly straightforward; see para 2-1g:

Consult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum.

(1) This includes, but is not limited to letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail (e-mail), Web site postings, web log (blog) postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or other forms of dissemination or documentation.

Yeah, individual commanders have some wiggle room to interpret that, but that means every commander at every level could have a different policy. That won't happen. Some general somewhere will make his own policy standard for the entire theater.

Indeed, they claim no real change was ever in the offing

Bullshit. The Army can spin it how it likes now that they're taking flak, but the intent was to quielty kill off independent milblogging & co-opt the remainder as just another piece of propaganda.