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The Duffel Brief · the free edition, Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Vol. 15 · No. 135 · Wednesday, 11 November 2026

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Vol. 15 · No. 135

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Vol. 15 · No. 135 · Deployed worldwide

Wednesday

11 November 2026

1538 Zulu

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· Page 2

Op-ed writing added to Infantry officers course

Filed · 1542

WASHINGTON, DC – Complaining about the 'poor-quality' and 'substandard' opinion pieces submitted to newspapers by female lieutenants who have washed out of Infantry Officers Course, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos has announced that all future iterations of the course will now include an op-ed writing workshop.

Dubbed "First to Write," the workshop will start as a trial program at IOC before eventually moving to The Basic School and Officer Candidate School. It will augment the Mothers of America writing classes, available to recruits in boot camp, who are encouraged to talk about their foul-mouthed homophobic drill instructors.

Amos made his decision after reading an essay by 2nd Lt. Sage Santangelo that was recently published in the Washington Post. In her essay, she wrote about failing infantry training because she was perceived as weaker than her fellow male lieutenants and reasoned that publicly whining to the commandant would fix this perception.

Santangelo, currently deployed to Afghanistan, has already written a follow-up opinion piece in Quetta's Daily Mashriq newspaper asking the Taliban not to attack her unit because unequal standards had not allowed it to prepare for battle as much as other units.

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