FORT LEE, Va. — Lt. Col. Wendell Bowers caused the United States to lose the Global War on Terror this week after he allowed his S3 section leave prior to 1900 hours one evening, sources confirm today.

“Next week, we will publicly surrender to the Taliban, the Islamic State, and several other B-list terrorist groups, because some so-called leader couldn’t let a few staff officers fall asleep at their desks,” Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper said, as he packed personal belongings from his Pentagon office into a cardboard box. “Our military runs on coffee, Copenhagen, and the disembodied souls of staff officers who are zealously devoted to PowerPoint fonts and stop-light charts.”

“If the interplay between those variables is even slightly out of balance, our whole department won’t function.”

Bowers has been the commander of the Combined Arms Support Command’s 173rd Mess Kit Repair Battalion since April of last year, and sources say he was on track for brigade command, non-select for brigadier general, and mandatory retirement age in a cubicle in the Pentagon basement. Unfortunately, his lapse in judgement will end this career trajectory—and likely U.S. freedom, from hordes of terrorist groups plotting its demise.

One witness described how the incident unfolded.

“I was updating version 27 of the command-and-staff slides for next Thursday when the old man stopped by my desk and told me to pack it up for the night,” Maj. Eric Sullivan, the battalion operations officer told reporters. “I was shocked. I mean—it wasn’t even 1845.”

“I got home in time to have a beer with my wife’s boyfriend and eat dinner with their kids. So that was kind of nice.”

By selfishly allowing the soldiers under his command to leave early, Bowers initiated an irreversible chain of events. His S3 shop missed a brigade operations order tasking the unit to switch from riveted to welded canteen cup butterfly handle fasteners. As such, the unit failed to stop shipment of the 50,000 recently riveted canteen cups heading to troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Atropia.

These riveted canteens became sieves, leaking precious field coffee and delaying comprehension and fine motor skills across the joint force. As a result, planes crashed, trucks ran off the road, and thousands of logistics packages full of precious Copenhagen never reached their destination.

“We are calling it the butterfly-handle effect.” Esper said as he stared nostalgically at photos of the defense industry executives he will no longer support. “And all because some ass clown couldn’t maintain the Army’s longest standing tradition.”