CC, I'm pleased you can see it, Beardy seems not to see the difference between our military leader criticising politicians or policy and expressing his concern about a remark that undermines UK security as it stands.
Your point is well made, but I think you're also slightly trying to find ways to politicise Sir Nick's statements. Yes, it was on a Political programme and, yes, it is both a political and Defence issue. The media interest that followed his comment points more to the reasonable response of many newspapers, broadcasters and twitterazzi (made up term, but you know what I mean) to reflect anything that grabs the public interest; that doesn't define it as political.
I know QRs would have forbidden me to make public statements concerning Military Policy or about military matters in general. But the (somewhat poor) military
PR machine is allowed to. If CDS sees himself as a part of that machine (I suspect he should) then QRs don't prohibit that. I have to admit that I've never read QRs end to end.